Arbouretum
Rites Of Uncovering

THE REVIEW

Finally a group that bewilders my senses. A dark, lo-fi version of the Grateful Dead to describe them in a single sentence. I didn’t believe records like this could be released in 2007. A vintage sound, if you will, also revisionist, with Dave Heumann’s shamanic and ancient voice (here he also plays the six-string) and the wildly bluesy guitars coloring rides that are at times pastoral and folk, at times stoner and psychedelic. On drums, former Lungfish Mitchell Feldstein with drumming and sound that couldn't be more seventies. They come from Baltimore, a city not exactly lively in terms of music scene, and this is their second work (does anyone have or can find the first one? I’m in a frantic search!).

There is, however, no space-time barrier, law of gravity, or psychic resistance capable of facing an album like "Rites of Uncovering". Because Arbouretum’s music is a web of rural songs and translucent echoes that come from everywhere to immediately enter the bloodstream, of sick tales and gravitational airs, of lacerating guitar choruses and jolts that take the listener's mind into a sort of endless reverie. So, you’ve understood: mystical guitar interweavings with roots planted in folk, the essence of American popular music, which is transformed, elevated into liturgical-ecstatic atmospheres. With a compressed and heavy bass that pulses and leaves visible trails in the sound structures that wander blissfully without a precise destination. Raw rock, without any sort of technicality, without overdubs, not trendy but immersed in the sixties/seventies to the core. Music with a decidedly ancient and captivating mood and pathos, sometimes with a progressive vibe and other times bluesy, but very refined: some insights or references to past memories are just hinted at, as if the band members felt a modesty in citing America’s best musical tradition (folk and beyond).

With an almost artisanal expertise, they build a sound that is the perfect synthesis between the aforementioned Grateful Dead ("Sleep of Shiloam"), the early and darker Sabbath (the lush opener "Signposts and Instruments") and the slowed down, acoustic Stones on opium ("Mohammed’s Hex and Bounty"). Difficult, however, to choose between one track and another, each is the natural consequence of proceeding through emotions that grow and expand along with listening until the hypnotic final ballad "Two Moons": it is then that we realize what kind of enchantment we have fallen into, in a terrible and fantastic place suspended on the edge of pure hallucination.

Pastoral, radical, yet simply "religious"... Easy triumphalism? Try listening to them, Arbouretum make an impression.