As the sun breaks over empty fields and sullen fog, “Dead Creek Drawl,” the opening track on Old Saw’s Country Tropics rises. This is the music of ancient soil; sonic wanderings imbued with the dirt of countless generations, saturated with the blood of our ancestral homes that, try as we might haunt us like anchored ghosts. “Dead Creek Drawl” hums with heavy drones, pedal steel piercing the burden with shards of light. Banjos jangle rhythmically through the grass, laden with tension over what fresh news the morning brings.
Old Saw’s music is devotional in the sense that it holds up hard truths as beacons and reminds us to look them straight in the eye so we can move on. Aural washes sing like an acoustic choir, bringing us in from the cold and giving permission to send our mistakes back to the grave, back to the open sky. It doesn’t matter where we lay our heads and it doesn’t matter how far we’ve strayed from cosmos’ astral blessings, nobody is ever totally lost. Follow the cascading banjos past the horizon. “Dead Creek Drawl” is the music of home.
Country Tropics is out November 19 on Lobby Art. They are offering 10 handmade test pressings in advance of the album release with donations being made to the Pioneer Valley Workers Center.
If you like what Foxy Digitalis does, please consider supporting us on Patreon.
