Tacoma Hellfarm Tragedy

Four years since breakthrough effort Orchard Songs, Tacoma Hellfarm Tragedy return, picking up where they left off while taking their evocative sound in unchartered directions. Tacoma Hellfarm Tragedy's great strength has been writing twangy, riff-oriented tunes with focus, adorned with hotshot playing and eeriness, but still hitting listeners directly with hooky, repetitive lyrical phrases and few distracting flourishes. Brad Giefert continues to deliver haunting songs like "Run This Horse Ragged" evenly, with an almost conversational tone, as Darryl Stevenson and Andrew Collins provide perfect harmonies, and guitar ace Jesse Whiteside squeezes his instrument's neck like an outlaw might a trigger. "Wicked Weather" and "Bones for Eyes" bound out with sinister intent, while "Gambling Hands" proves that the band would be most at home playing some sloppy saloon somewhere. A bit of psych seeps into "I'll Set the Old Town Hall on Fire," a well-orchestrated departure for Tacoma Hellfarm Tragedy, who are both back and gone again on the great, dark Canter Canter.