For a long time it’s been fine to think of Amps for Christ as an oddity. The project’s creative core, Henry Barnes, first became known as a member of legendary noise-crust band Man is the Bastard, and his turn toward Amps’ form of cracked, rustic art-folk—one that dug Jesus, no less—added an undertone of novelty compared to his MITB’s heaviness. Not that his new album, Canyons Cars and Crows, can be dismissed as an ex-punk’s cranky religious rambling, any more than his prior work comfortably can. As Barnes’ spirituality has receded to a dull, mellow glow, so has his music ripened, deepened, and opened.
Accordingly, Canyons is a burst fruit of an album. The elements of Amps past—feathery jangle, queasily harmonized leads, modulated organ, stomp-box daisy-chains—splay out in all directions, both sweeter and messier. But seeing as how Canyons is Barnes’ first full-length since 2006’s Every Eleven Seconds, there’s a deliberateness and refinement to the project’s otherwise chronic lack of sharp focus. The stubborn fuzziness of Barnes’ vision makes for a halo effect: On the instrumental “Hills of Padua”, keyboards are treated and smeared until they bleat like bagpipes, even as Barnes feeds them through a distortion pedal that might have been built out of a Geiger counter. That tattered, mutated, yet undeniably traditional folk air assumes a more solid shape on “Scottish Country Dance”, another vocal-free track that balances chiming delicacy with an earth-scraping underbelly glacial enough to have carved out the Great Glen. Even the Celtic lilt of “Chieftains I” and “Chieftains II” coheres into something more otherworldly than Old World. Still, these instrumentals brush the skin of the album’s dimensionality rather than dive into it.
When Barnes finds his voice, so does Canyons. “Sailor’s Searching” is a celestial shanty worthy of Tim Buckley—if Buckley had been a barnacled merman troubadour. Barnes’ crust roots abound on “Earth is Spinning”, where he sings with gentle, wizardly authority as guitars repurposed as flutes swirl around him. A throbbing oscillation of menacing noise pounds away in the background, like the volume knob of an old stereo is being cranked violently back and forth while a hardcore record plays. Psychedelia mingles with punk and folk, most effectively with “All Messed Up,” which draws on Pearls Before Swine’s caustic, acid-casualty confusion as it were a birthright.
Amps For Christ has long been a family affair, with Barnes’ brother and father often contributing to the recordings. But with “Miss You Mother”, his filial affection grows mournful. A lonesome sitar curls around Barnes’ barebones, Fahey-esque acoustic guitar, while a waveform is whittled into a haunting drone, a looped memory of those since gone. Barnes records at home, and that homespun ethic is more than just a method of expedience; it fills the corners of Canyons with cobwebs and echoes, a cocooning insularity that reduces even the most cosmic sentiment to something small and warm. “Time will come when the oceans rise/ And the coldest place seems so nice/ And through it all, love is still king,” Barnes sings on “Barely Breathe”, his voice shaking in the leafy shade of White Light-era Gene Clark. The President is called out on the carpet with a punk-instilled sneer before being whisked away into folky allegory. Political yet timid, the song almost swallows itself. Cloaked in mystique, sequestered in hermetic glory, Canyons Cars and Crows carries around its own atmosphere—one that Barnes alone can breathe.
