Customer Reviews

Loch Lomond / The Builders and The Butchers [Split Release Vinyl LP]

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Crazy Alaskans + beer + bluegrass and punk rock roots = win.

This has to be one of the most interesting albums I've heard since Lonesome Crowded West. I can't really say more than that. I can't wait to see this band develop. My only regret is not seeing these guys in Alaska when I lived there. I'll just have to catch them next time they are in Boston. Buy it, thank me later.

If you're reading this review then you've found out about this band - good for you - you're paying attention. This is the best album of the year that probably no one will hear. These guys are a hell of a band - good songs, good production - not overdone, good energy. If I were to compare it to anything it sounds like Old Crow Medicine Show crossed with the White Stripes. There are a lot of bands out there right now wishing they were the Builders & the Butchers - hopefully they'll get their deserved recognition.

The percussion unit's the first Jack to pop out of the box. The Builders and the Butchers like to split a drum set into two parts and have one drummer playing on each half, creating what they call a "deconstructed" percussion sound. This lends a communal sound to "The Night Pt 1," and carries on throughout the album. "Red Hands," the first bona fide song on this debut, sets the disk off with a bluesy start-stop bang. Momentum weakens with "The Spanish Death Song," with drawn-out melodica sections on a track that probably should have only been half as long; as we see on this and a couple other tracks, singer-guitarist Ryan Sollee's vocals haven't developed the subtle touch necessary to carry the slower bridges.

That brings us to the heart of the album. "Black Dresses" is a quick, catchy little number revolving around a woman "with a stone where there should've been a heart," while the mandolin-led "Bottom of the Lake" is arguably the gloomiest, catchiest, most intense number out of this entire album.

The brittle, slow-paced "The Gallows" undoes a lot of the momentum from the previous two tracks, but things pick right back up with the infectious, insult-laden fun of "Bringin' Home the Rain" ("You're dancin' with your demons, baby / you forgot your former life / and it was hard swimmin' once but now you're daily divin' in!"). The next four tracks continue in much the same strong vein, until coming to a disappointing conclusion with the contrived lifter-upper "Find Me in the Air."

If I could, I would have given this 3 1/2 stars, but I had to pick either 3 or 4. The major strengths on this disk are the musicianship, the loose feel of the percussion section, Sollee's authoritative yelp, and the gloomy atmosphere this band achieves from start to finish. Amateur production, a few weaker tunes and other promising yet under-developed pieces mitigate the overall project, however; while I sound like I'm being harsh, just listen to their other two albums ("Salvation is a Deep Dark Well" and "Dead Reckoning"), and you'll see that both are a definite leap forward from this flawed, yet promising start.

If you listen to The Shins, The Avett Brothers, The Decemberists, Delta Spirit, Mumford and Sons, The White Stripes, The Dodos, The Fleet Foxes, The Jayhawks, Uncle Tupelo, Ryan Adams and the Cardinals, any of the members of The Monsters of Folk... hell, even if you like vintage R.E.M. or have any musical taste whatsoever, you're missing out by not hearing this album. The album is definitely more lyrically folk-inspired than any of the others (save maybe Mumford and Sons) and in a lot of ways not quite the "hyper-literate prog rock" (a Steven Colbert term for the Decemberists) of the others. Though you can hear the old-timey qualities of the songs, they seem immediately modern and somehow immediate. A super-strong percussive backbone drives all the tunes, and the songs are beautifully ordered to build on one another so that the sum is greater than the parts. Beautiful but strong male harmonies (rare to find on any album) compliment the driving force of the drums. A stunning and oftimes angry album, an album that seems to find as much positiveness and power in that emotion as the Clash did in London Calling. Beautiful, chilling, amazing. Buy this now.