Wild Dogs: A Brief Review Of The New Album From New Bums (Six Organs Of Admittance And Skygreen Leopards)

By all rights, this is something I probably shouldn't like. But, the truth is that I loved this album. Last Time I Saw Grace, the new record from Six Organs of Admittance's Ben Chasny and Skygreen Leopards' Donovan Quinn, mixes folk with a sort of lazy stab at the blues that suggests disheveled genius in spots. The Drag City release does so much so deftly that I'm sort of surprised how charmed I was by this.

"Wild Dogs" lurches with the laid-back force of early Royal Trux, though with less feedback, even as "Cover Band" adds a hint of organ and slide-guitar to things to narrowly overlap with territory mapped out by Opal and Mazzy Star earlier. And while this all has a casual vibe, one that suggests it was thrown together almost, the whole enterprise is, in reality, carefully and delicately pitched. "Tuned to Graffiti", for instance, recalls T. Rex as much as it does something that's officially Folk, just like "Street of Spies" owes a debt to the druggy chamber pop of Street Hassle. Throughout this whole project, Chasny and Quinn are using the trappings of the forms to make something unique and individualistic.

As I said, the written descriptions of this might play up the acoustic elements, but the hooks are all Led Zeppelin III or Trux, elegantly recast into the soundtrack for a year of isolation as we hide from a plague. In that sense, there's an intimacy and immediacy here that I found very affecting. It helps that the melodies are as strong as the choices of instrumentation around them.

Last Time I Saw Grace by New Bums is out now via Drag City.

[Photo: Jason Quever]