Siskiyou

There's a high, lonesome sound that runs through Colin Huebert's songs on this sophomore album by Siskiyou. Nervy and unsettled, like the brain buzz in the aftermath of an argument with a loved one, they have the feel of debris coming to rest. Huebert sketched out the bulk of the album in rural interior BC then roughed them out with Erik Arnesen as they toured with their other band, Great Lake Swimmers. Their clattering folk bones were later strung together with a modest amount of sinew from Shaunn Watt and Peter Carruthers. The '70s hangover that bled into the edges of their debut returns with a stronger throb here, especially explicit in their cover of Neil Young's "Revolution Blues." That song, about Young's brush with Charles Manson, is an appropriate touchstone for the whole album: high country mourning full of banjos and pedal steel played by those touched by big city darkness, now back in the simpler darkness of their small towns.