I don’t quite recall the first time I heard Gregory Alan Isakov’s “Big Black Car,” but I do remember thinking I’d found something special. The indie-folk singer’s unpretentious storytelling, his grippingly simple finger-picking, the mystic, itinerant feel of it all: It was like I’d stepped into the backing-track of some haunting, quiet loss. At 11, I’d never experienced one myself, but I got the gist. That soft, twangy throughline defines Isakov’s work, and it comes as no surprise: He was born in South Africa but has lived much of his life in Colorado, where he dwells in a barn and runs a quaint farm just outside Boulder. I shouldn’t even have to tell you that. When you listen to Appaloosa Bones, his sixth studio record, Isakov’s background practically speaks for itself.
Appaloosa Bones is the singer’s first album in five years, and it feels like a homecoming in more ways than one. Many of the musical textures which defined Isakov’s early corpus dominate his new record: spacious, grand pauses, uncomplicated stylistics, disarming sincerity and an unassuming, affecting joie de vivre. It’s not that his music is energizing or jumpy—often the opposite, really—it’s that it’s almost entirely free of cynicism, instead embracing the sort of romantic, humanist mindset that feels so far removed from 21st-century reality. It’s a comforting thing, especially if you tie Isakov’s thematics with the lush Americana that girds his aesthetic landscape. He makes music for an uncorrupted country, one scattered with swaying fields and rushing brooks, straightforward heartbreaks and neatly-ending stories.
That reliability posits Isakov as an artist unlikely to release a song like you’ve never heard before, or a cutting-edge record full of novel sounds and ideas. But it doesn’t really seem like he’s trying to. He sings about 19th-century circus artists and vast Western skies, trusty horses and departing sweethearts. You could put him, Johnny Cash and Little Women on the same Pinterest board. For that same reason, Appaloosa Bones occasionally teeters on repetitive. Most of its songs are uniform in length, instrumentation and vocals, not to mention a conspicuously common fourth-quarter swell to bring the whole thing to a satisfying, dramatic endnote. It is, perhaps, not an album meant to be listened to front-to-back without a secondary activity. But the LP is rescued by its own sincerity; it proves impossible to resent the simplicity of the thing, because it’s just so darn sweet.
Take “The Fall,” the album’s first track and one of its lead singles. It’s got a shimmering, almost didactic lilt to it; a soft country thrum to its vocals, a sparkling banjo riff with a spaciously simple aura. Tactile, evocative imagery like “Ivory bone, opera glass / Angles of attack” carries the song safely into professional territory, but there’s a homespun feel to it that gives you the warm fuzzies. That unrelenting gentleness somehow doesn’t get too cloying, as it so often does in indie-folk, thanks to the utter conviction with which Isakov seems to spin it out.
Or turn to “One Day,” which reads like a bedtime story. Tracing through a fantastical world shift, the shimmery tune turns to Isakov and his darling as they “drink and dance like there’s no one there,” covered in rain and warbling starlight. Typically Isakovian lyrics like “Oh these bones will carry me home” are, again, nothing particularly novel. But there’s that sweet rhythm; the invocations of the natural world and its gentle magnitude; lyrics meant to be easily understood and connected with by modern cowboys and sometimes-campers alike.
Gregory Alan Isakov has found his niche, and he’s continuing to make expertly-tooled music within it. Nothing on Appaloosa Bones will blow your mind or stop you in your tracks, but it’s reliably beautiful and starkly self-possessed throughout, simultaneously free of forced erudition and mass-produced pandering. It is, perhaps, not music for everyone, but fans of Isakov’s stylings will be thrilled to introduce his latest venture into their daintily-plucked campfire song repertoires.
Miranda Wollen is Paste‘s music intern. She lives in New York and attends school in Connecticut, but you can find her online @mirandakwollen.
