The Builders and the Butchers
Salvation is a Deep, Dark Well
Rating: 4.0/5.0
Label: Gigantic Music
There are several common stereotypes about acoustic music: it’s played by any number of earnest men and women singing about their feelings in college dorms, on quads and in coffee shops; it’s the most “authentic” way to present music: unadorned, honest, real; and finally, if you’re an indie band playing it, you’re characterized as “freak folk,” which has to be most useless subgenre label since post-rock. Portland’s The Builders and the Butchers defy most of the stereotypes and thank god they do. On sophomore album Salvation is a Deep, Dark Well, the band continues to play acoustic music with the fury of punk, the elemental power of old blues and the communal spirit of a hoedown. What stands out is the bristling energy and forward momentum of this music, something that’s even more pronounced in the band’s live shows.
Builders’ energetically ramshackle self-titled debut felt like an extension of their live act, whereas Salvation is an altogether more ambitious, varied and intense album. Produced by Decemberists guitarist Chris Funk, it sounds bigger and fuller without sacrificing spontaneity or grit. The band ranges further both musically and lyrically, employing horns, strings and a choir, writing their first romantic ballad and finding inspiration in the Spanish Civil War, outsider artist Henry Darger and vampires.
On opening track “Golden and Green,” singer Ryan Sollee tells the listener to “close your eyes.” It’s a deceptive command, as what follows is a dark, sweeping song, inspired by Darger that explodes with the apocalyptic fury of a metal song. It could be the soundtrack for the four horsemen. Sollee once mentioned in an interview about finding common ground between old American music and punk; the group succeeds in combining the two in a way that recalls the Pogues, mid-1960s Dylan and the Violent Femmes circa Hallowed Ground.
Solllee has a gift for using simple and familiar, but powerful, imagery. He gets back to what so many blues, country and folk songs are about: God, the devil, struggle, evil and especially death. Yet it’s utterly contemporary, especially the foreboding end of the world vibe the shows up in several songs as well as the character from “In the Branches,” who hears the radio warn about “the coming storms, the economy and crime.” The town in the acidic “Down in this Hole” is populated with corrupt cops, street walkers, smoking children and lecherous clergymen and could be just down the road from the Juarez of Dylan’s “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues.”
Despite all these dark themes, the album ends on a hopeful note. “The World is a Top” is a bluesy gospel song that sounds like it’s coming from the bottom of a well (it was recorded live at a Masonic temple), with a beautifully soulful guest vocal from Kaysandra Irving. Salvation is hard-earned in The Builders and the Butchers’ world, but well worth the journey.
by Lukas Sherman
