Universal Light 
Recent collaborations between RSTB faves Elkhorn and Mike Gangloff helped to incubate a new band that sees light this year. Gangloff (Pelt, Eight Point Star) joins the always excellent Jesse Sheppard (Elkhorn, The Heavy Lidders) and multi-instrumentalist Kally Schenker in a trio that toes the lines between pastoral, classical, folk, and drone. Gangloff and Sheppard are no strangers to slipping through the ley lines of Academic Appalachia, and here, they craft a record that’s as ambitious in scope as it is grounded in tradition. The record weaves four pieces that parade as suites, each shifting in tone in accordance with their titles. They open the album light and lilting with “Lullaby>Summer Field” but turn towards darker shades that dig into the blood buried under the tenets of our supposed ideals.
The mid-section of the album winds its way from “Triode>Freedom” to “Freedom>Universal Blues;” that figment of freedom hanging heavy over a county that too often waves the word as a sales pitch sold in bait and switch. The strings of the 12-string tangle with the sharp anguish of the violin, squeezing the seance of “Freedom” into the mangled shapes that haunt our present. Schenker’s viola remains the anchor in the upheaval, a somber repast for the fractured ideal that grips the listener; as steadfast and steely as an elder who’s lived long enough to see new generations queue up to make the mistakes their own has barely forgotten.
It would suggest that the band winds back to the lighthearted on closer “The Squirrel is a Pretty Thing,” but don’t let the fluff title fool ya, here the band ends on a note of darkness that’s still hung heavy with the smoke from the last two tales. Discordance meets dirge on the closer, playing the strings’ urgency against the spoken-word sobriety from Schenker. Fans of Elkhorn, Pelt, and Black Twig will certainly find much to love here, but the trio moves well beyond their past alliances, eking out a record that subverts traditions and roots for truths beneath the overgrowth of Americana.
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