Gray/Smith

The second offering from Gray/Smith expands the duo’s prog-country amble into full bloom. Leaning a bit more into the latter this time around, Heels In The Aisle, pairs knotted pensive acoustics with a new infusion of sun-baked saunter. The band, which features members of Pigeons, No-Neck Blues Band, Rhyton, and the Suntanama, is no stranger to experimental leanings, and they leap into the release running, taking the listener on a side-long journey that calls back to the darkness of their debut. As the clouds clear, the band hits the prairie, shaking a bit of dust from their instruments and lighting into an alt-country careen that finds them digging the dirt of Townes, Blaze, and the brothers Kirkwood from under their fingernails.

There’s been an uptick of psych slingers gone country of late, but Gray/Smith fall in more with their contemporaries in APIE than with the canyon quiver that’s been picking up steam from Nashville to the West Coast. Even when the songs hit the sun there’s still a kind of whiskey shake and sour stomach sadness here that only seems to get fully form out on the East Coast. Perhaps this coast just can’t quite settle like our neighbors to the West. Some souls can never truly unwind and I appreciate a sonic drag through stale cigarettes and yesterday’s last call regrets. The band pack it all up in a white line hypnotism that stretches out like seven hours of highway staring down the day. Might sound sour on paper, but it’s solace on the ears.