Greg Freeman’s 2022 debut album, I Looked Out, doesn’t really begin with a song—just sound. True to its placeholder title, opener “Horns” is 44 seconds of sheer noise: a trio of static-y clarinet, saxophone, and trumpet stretching to an earsplitting, nails-on-a-chalkboard crescendo. Everything sounds distorted, like it was tracked on an old tape recorder that had been submerged underwater, including the song’s sole “lyric,” the record’s titular phrase. Hearing Freeman speak it, his vocals muddled and tone tentative, you get the sense you’ve stumbled upon something private, a relic you were never meant to discover.
The slow-burn success of I Looked Out has only heightened that feeling. Without backing from a PR campaign or major publications, the record received little attention upon its release, but in the three years since, it’s garnered Freeman critical buzz and something of a cult following. Intentionally or not, the Burlington-based singer-songwriter’s sophomore album, Burnover, immediately reflects these higher stakes. This time, the first thing you hear is Freeman’s voice: gratingly shrill, a little squeaky, and magnetically confident regardless. That gesture succinctly sets the self-assured tone of Burnover, an ambitious and largely compelling (re)introduction to one of the most essential voices currently emerging from an ongoing country-rock boom.
Of the other up-and-coming rockers revitalizing alt-country, Freeman is most frequently likened to the subgenre’s reigning golden boy, MJ Lenderman. While the artists’ similarities are perhaps overstated, the comparison is not baseless: the two rising stars are both twangy tenors, lyrical aces, and young guys proficient in the art of ripping guitar solos that’ll make you weep and mutter a fatherly hell yeah, dude under your breath at the same time. And Freeman’s pivot towards a higher-fidelity sound on Burnover resembles Lenderman’s own on his sophomore album, Boat Songs. Like the latter’s eponymous 2019 debut, I Looked Out was composed of layers of feedback-soaked instruments that created an atmosphere as thick as the air on a humid, overcast summer afternoon. The music’s violence and volume were rivaled only by Freeman’s throat-shredding scream, delivering end-times proclamations like “I will not be afraid when my loneliness crumbles” with visceral, haunting urgency.
The best songs on Burnover are suffused with the same oversized emotions as I Looked Out, but they’re leaner, punchier, and brighter. These qualities sound like they’d make for an easy listen, which Burnover can be—it isn’t long before you’re bobbing your head along to the uncharacteristically lax piano jam “Rome, New York”—but even then, the music never lets you settle. As a composer and writer, Freeman has only grown more restless and challenging: his grooves are blocky and slightly queasy; most lyrics demand close study to be properly digested; there aren’t really any choruses to bite into. Most songs, instead, patchwork together epic build-ups, breakdowns, and curious, interstitial interludes that would do the late Sparklehorse mastermind Mark Linkous proud. In particular, the lo-fi ballad “Sawmill” reminds me of Linkous’ collage-like approach; the song’s hollow-sounding vocals, frayed ribbons of violin, and garbled interpolation of a New York Times movie review wouldn’t feel out of place in one of Linkous’ own surreal, strangely tender love songs.
Glockenspiel and chimes shimmer atop the cacophonous midsection of “Wolfpine” like fairy dust, elevating the Neil Young-ish scorcher to the cosmos. The respective meltdowns of “Point and Shoot” and “Rome, New York” let compressed feelings finally explode from their confines, spilling suddenly into song. By the end of the former’s breakdown, Freeman is backed only by a screechy violin that drunkenly harmonizes with his parting statement: “She could see the frame, but never the picture / A live round spun, and a split-second flicker broke,” he sings despondently, returning to a verse he’d spat early in the song with a sneer. Instead of rushing on to the couplet that’d capped those lines, he lets that “broke” hang in the air, his weary sigh and simple final word conveying at least as much as—if not more than—the cryptic early verses. Since his debut, Freeman hasn’t shied from pushing his voice past its breaking point, and the new clarity of Burnover’s production only amplifies its emotional reach: unobstructed by blankets of reverb, it cuts even deeper.
While a few musical interludes are prolonged and sonically cluttered to the point that they dampen momentum, most lend Freeman’s songs a cinematic drama that’s rare in alt-country. Burnover’s lyricism functions similarly. Some songs are so factually dense that they run the risk of alienating listeners, but apart from a few missteps (the sedative, information-crammed title track, for instance), Burnover’s poetic flourishes and dynamic arrangements are so engaging that you can’t help but find yourself caring—or at least rocking out. Take “Gulch,” a late-album blitz that weds the sloppiness of Sorry Ma-era Replacements with the melodic sophistication of Paul Westerberg’s later projects, for instance: It’s probably the first moshable song to potentially prompt a deep-dive into ancient petroglyphs.
Freeman has said that he considers his songs to be “something you should study,” and the lyric sheet to Burnover brims with enough proper nouns that an attempt to decode it can feel like scouting out sources for a research paper. (Specifically, one on Northeastern history: he name-drops figures ranging from Joseph Smith, the Vermont-born founder of Mormonism, to Revolutionary War hero Ethan Allen; the album’s title is an allusion to the “Burned-Over District,” a region comprising parts of central and western New York that was a hotbed for religious revivalism during the early 19th century.) But his most affecting lyrics position him as a subject rather than scholar: when he’s lonely or in love (or both at once), his language leaps out at you with its life-or-death intensity. On “Curtain,” yearning for a long-distance lover during the late, lonesome hours isn’t just maddening, “it’s like burning the furniture to keep the house bright at night.” He renders heartache with such astuteness and absurdity throughout Burnover: early on, he personifies it as a living, breathing entity “outside doing push-ups in the street” while, indoors, “the silence talks back at you” and “the window’s open, just laughing at you.”
Those lines come from the catchy “Gallic Shrug,” a new classic that’s kind of like if Westerberg had a rural accent and a thing for pedal steel. It starts out surprisingly radio-friendly, with a surge of warm instrumentation drifting in, and Freeman’s bittersweet drawl is quite pretty when he stretches punchy laments into neat couplets and tercets. Things change after a few wistful verses when, upon looking to the sky for love, he’s met with a “Gallic shrug”—a phrase used to describe a French gesture of indifference. It’s an obscure expression that Freeman makes out to be a death sentence, his voice thinning out to a childlike wail before rupturing into a shriek of frustration that seems to tear through his body. The music responds with a burst of color, and despite sounding like he’s either about to start sobbing or convulsing on the floor at your feet, Freeman keeps singing. If there was ever any doubt, Burnover incinerates it: Greg Freeman is ready to be heard—come hell or high water.
Anna Pichler has written for Paste since 2024, and she interned for the music section in the spring of 2025. When she’s not writing about music, she’s working towards an undergraduate degree in English literature at The Ohio State University. Keep up with her work on X @Anna_pichler and Bluesky @annapichler.bsky.social.
