Released in 2007, Arbouretum's sophomore album, Rites of Uncovering, put a darker, broodier spin on Americana. The album's opening track, "Signposts and Instruments" still stands as the Baltimore-based quartet's finest moment-- an ethereal dirge that seems far more otherworldly and bizarre than the its handful of slow-mo power chords should allow for. Delivered in an echo-laden whisper, singer/guitarist Dave Heumann imparted verses that sounded like the kind of stuff you'd find scrawled in a dream journal. If you're among those who hated groups like Band of Horses for their ordinary, work-a-day, lovey-dovey-ness, the doom-shrouded folk-moves on Rites of Uncovering had an appeal.
In the years since, the band's struggled to strike a similar compromise between spirit-world imagery and Americana-tinged bar-rock. On their subsequent records, Arbouretum fortified its heavier inclinations. They became a tighter and louder band-- dialing in gritty fuzz tones and extending the free-form freak-outs beyond the 10-minute range-- but as the music's density increased, the haunting vacuum that defined Rites got squashed.
On Coming Out of the Fog, the band's new album, Arbouretum's eerier inclinations are back in alignment with their amplifiers. As a lyricist, Heumann favors heavy subject matter-- suffering, isolation, mortal man's impossible struggle against natural or supernatural forces-- and he often saturates each line with a mouthful of syllables. "I've no need of lampreys now nor the funerary ode," he sang on "Tonight's a Jewel", arguably the most light-hearted number on Rites of Uncovering. In Fog's quieter stretches, he manages to pack that broad spiritual sweep into simpler phrases. On the pedal steel-driven "Oceans Don't Sing", Heumann sets a concrete scene-- longing for beach-side serenity-- before slipping into impressionistic language.
Heumann still whips out esoteric lines, but he reserves his heaviest poetry for the band's noisiest and most repetitive music, where it can sit comfortably atop the battering, barely shifting grooves. On "World Split Open" the band rides a single grinding riff for all it's worth, while Heumann hurls out heady and arcane couplets.
As a guitarist, Heumann channels a number of inspired shredders-- Neil Young, Richard Thompson, and even Western Saharan outfits, like Group Doueh-- but as a songwriter, he's the product of two influences: singer Will Oldham, with whom he toured as a backing guitarist, and Baltimore punk-rock-Gnostics, Lungfish, whose drummer Mitchell Feldstein has done time behind the kit for Arbouretum. The former provided a blueprint for his hyper-cerebral lyrics and staid melodies. The latter, pretty much everything else-- the sea chantey rhythms, the cyclical riffage, and any/all of his mystical tendencies. On Fog, Arbouretum does well by both parties.
