4 out of 5

Label: VHF Records

Produced by: Carl Saff (mastered by)

With my first exposure to Elkhorn being their pairing with Pelt’s Mike Gangloff, I was expecting this multi-instrumentalist duo to be of that musical legacy. And they are, but also, as opener Crystal Hummingbird’s Jack Rose-y pluckings are joined by an underscore buzz of distortion… they are not. Even taking into account Pelt’s often noisier past, Drew Gardner’s and Jesse Sheppard’s varying mix of stringed guitars, bass, zither, vibraphone and more skip across psychedelic genre styles in a way that Pelt (and by extension Black Twig Pickers) do not, at least within a single album. In doing so, Elkhorn’s The Red Valley is still incredibly seamless, stitching open-ended improv to drone to quite active nigh-rockers together without a hitch; the band also turns the scene on its head: by not exactly being a “if you like that, you’ll like this” easy comparison, the music’s many inspirations get reconstituted into something unique, and identifiable. Again, from the initial rumble of distortion, I had my expectations of soothing folk properly shattered, and each song thereafter achieved a similar effect, though sometimes coming at it from a different direction. Amore simplistic read of this could align Elkhorn’s varying approaches with some of the aforementioned bands / artists, but – yeah, that’s simplistic. What’s more impactful, and rather immediate, is how constructed this all feels, while being careful and calming enough to have the same contemplative or mesmeric vibes of blissed out psych. That is: you can listen to this however you want, be it as background or for meditation, or you can tune right in and dig it as an indie-fied folk album. Percussion is probably a key part of this, definitely doing more than just keeping pace, but even when our duo (joined by Jesse Sparhawk) strips down to dueling guitars, The Red Valley maintains its momentum.

All of those are positives, and yet you see a 4 out of 5 rating… really only because of some sequencing second-guessing. Whether listened to digitally of on LP, tracks 2 and 3 (Gray Salt Trail; Black Wind of Kayenta) blend into one another, finding distinction in their mid-sections and overall structure, by sounding similar from afar. Combined to about 15 minutes total, neither song is bad by any stretch, but it’s really like one song ends, then the same song begins again. Elsewhere on the LP, every tracks feel more defined, and again, these songs add definition where it matters, but it’s a small hiccup all the same.