Arbouretum | ||
| Allmusic Biography : Dave Heumann, a musician with something of a rustic, poetic bent who backed up musicians like Bonnie "Prince" Billy and Cass McCombs, started Arbouretum in the early 2000s. The band was comprised of Heumanns friend Walker David Teret on guitar, ex-Lungfish member Mitchell Feldstein on drums, and Corey Allender on bass. Arbouretums debut, Long Live the Well-Doer, was released in 2004, and their second album, Rites of Uncovering, came out three years later. The latter was recorded in part by Paul Oldham and, according to Heumann, was influenced by the works of writer Paul Bowles. Solidifying themselves with Corey Allender on bass, Daniel Franz on drums, and Steve Strohmeier on guitar, Heumann reentered the studio with Rob Girardi again in 2008 and finished Song of the Pearl in only two months. Thrill Jockey released the record in February of 2009. The band toured the United States in support and immediately reentered the studio with producer Matt Boynton, who had recorded much of 2007s Rites of Uncovering. Arbouretum underwent a lineup change in 2010: guitarist Steve Strohmeier was replaced by keyboardist Matthew Pierce. Following the inspiration of archetypal psychologist Carl Jungs The Red Book (at least the images that led to his writing it), Arbouretum released the expansive, mythology-drenched effort The Gathering in 2011. Around this time, Heumann formed a friendship with Hush Arbors Keith Wood. The two bands planned a joint European tour, and in 2012 released a split LP, Aureola, to showcase their like-minded sounds. In 2013, they followed it with the full-length Coming Out of the Fog and nine months later the four-track, 26-minute Gourd of Gold EP; the latter entirely comprised Gordon Lightfoot covers. After a four-year layoff from recording, Arbouretum returned with their eighth studio album, 2017s Song of the Rose. | ||
 | Album: 1 of 8 Title: Long Live the Well-Doer Released: 2004 Tracks: 9 Duration: 38:33 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Allmusic AlbumCover | 1 Sands and Sands (03:32) 2 Jonas Got a Tooth (03:31) 3 Dont Let It Show (04:00) 4 I Am a Somnambulist (04:43) 5 People Flock Not to the Good (03:28) 6 Wisteria (03:29) 7 Early Bird Gets the Worm (02:28) 8 All That Will Be Will Become, All That Has Come Isnt Gone (08:15) 9 Songs a Seed In My Garden (05:07) |
 | Album: 2 of 8 Title: Kale Released: 2008-07-22 Tracks: 7 Duration: 17:59 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Allmusic AlbumCover | 1 Time Doesnt Lie (?) 2 Buffalo Ballet (05:40) 3 Flood of Floods (06:32) 4 Dome Under the Sky (?) 5 The Endless Plain of Fortune (?) 6 Green Pool (03:26) 7 Mr. Wilson (02:20) |
| Kale : Allmusic album Review : This LP and MP3-only split release from two of Thrill Jockey’s newer bands combines new music with a smattering of John Cale covers, which accounts for the album’s name. KALE features both Pontiak’s meditative grooves and Arbouretum’s folky psychedelic rock. Arbouretum’s faithful version of Cale’s “Buffalo Ballet” and Pontiak’s takes on “The Endless Plain of Fortune” and “Mr. Wilson” blend nicely with both groups’ originals, making what could be a schizophrenic collection sound fairly seamless. The whole split albums ambience is generally a slow boil, but Pontiak’s “Dome Under the Sky” finds a place to stomp majestically. | ||
 | Album: 3 of 8 Title: Couldnt Hit It Sideways Released: 2010-05-10 Tracks: 1 Duration: 51:14 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% AlbumCover | 1 Couldnt Hit It Sideways (51:14) |
 | Album: 4 of 8 Title: The Gathering Released: 2011-02-15 Tracks: 7 Duration: 43:52 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Allmusic AlbumCover | 1 The White Bird (07:09) 2 When Delivery Comes (04:22) 3 Destroying to Save (05:07) 4 The Highwayman (04:13) 5 Waxing Crescents (07:48) 6 The Empty Shell (04:33) 7 Song of the Nile (10:37) |
| The Gathering : Allmusic album Review : Baltimores Arbouretum are singular on the stoner psych-rock scene. Due in large part to the vision of lyricist, frontman, and lead guitarist Dave Heumann, their sound is simultaneously sprawling, devastatingly heavy, sludgy, meandering, and mysterious. The Gathering showcases a lineup change showcasing keyboardist Matthew Pierce. Paradoxically, the bands grimy aesthetic doesnt suffer; theyre even heavier. On these seven songs, Heumanns guitar and voice remain the focal points. His slow, dense riffing and atypical approach to elongated soloing are extensions of his singing voice (its a dead cross between Warren Zevon, John Cale, and Richard Thompson). Heumanns writing is drenched in mytho-poetic imagery distilled from Carl Jungs archetypal psychology (in particular, those that inspired his writing of The Red Book) and less obvious Celtic and Anglo folk traditions. While strange open-space visions of wasted, bleached-out visions of Americana have always haunted his work, the lyrics here transcended those concerns. They are woven into slippery melodies that are juxtaposed against the acid bath of harsh distortion in ever-riffing guitars bogged-out thudding kick drums, open, droning, minimally constructed basslines, and subtle, chameleon-ike keyboard textures. The opening track, "The White Bird," draws its labyrinthine message directly from Jung: "Theres somewhere that I have been meaning to revisit/In and among all, even as its true nature is hid/Here, in the gloaming and black night/Here, in the dawn and the golding bright..." The listener is invited inside a journey that has hallmarks in iconic symbolism, disaster, war, transendence, and, finally, redemption. In "Destroying to Save," a string section washes the backdrop of Heumanns sung lines and distorted solo fills that stagger -- albeit majestically -- against the crashing of cymbals and blasted reverb as he sings of "the ashen rider on a shadow mare." The reading of Jimmy Webbs "The Highwayman" could easily be mistaken for one of Heumanns own songs, so well does it fit inside this albums nightmarish visions. The closer, the monolithic, "Song of the Nile," is ten-plus minutes of crushing weight, and blown-out, two-note bass drones. It gives way to a hypnotic riff and a stratospheric guitar solo that concludes with the band achieving an almighty throb via an utterly unholy white-out sonic architecture. The Gathering is Arbouretums "bridge too far"; there is no return because this set is a destination, not a development. | ||
 | Album: 5 of 8 Title: Aureola Released: 2012-04-21 Tracks: 8 Duration: 40:54 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Allmusic AlbumCover | 1 Lowly Ghost (04:11) 2 Prayer of Forgetfulness (04:40) 3 Up Yr Coast (04:55) 4 People & Places (03:24) 5 The Sleeper (03:06) 6 New Scarab (06:52) 7 The Black Sun (06:05) 8 St. Anthonys Fire (07:41) |
| Aureola : Allmusic album Review : Hush Arbors and Arbouretum, two extremely different outfits that both explore the lineage of progressive folk and its chance encounters with experimental and improvisatory forms, come together on the split album Aureola as distant but loving cousins or possibly two sides of the same coin. Hush Arbors Keith Wood and crew contribute five drifty tunes of wandering dreamer folk touched by subdued bursts of fuzzed-to-infinity guitar leads. Woods involvement as a supportive player in Six Organs of Admittance, Current 93, and other more free-form outfits has informed his structured folk with loosely unhinged crosscurrents. The free-raga lead guitar exclamations on "People & Places" take the songs overall feel from On the Beach-era Neil Young outtake to one of animated free flight. Woods achy high-register vocals may bring Bon Iver to mind to some, but the wounded character that lies beneath the surface has more in common with Bobb Trimbles cold falsettos or deeper still the washy lostness of Gary Higgins on his classic of outsider folk, Red Hash. Arbouretum also wander around the intersection of traditional folk and a new breed of psychedelic sounds, relying on a more tumultuous blend of overdriven guitars, booming rhythms, and U.K. folk-inspired melodies serving as the starting point for drony improvisations. The three tracks offered up here all stretch out in a languid uneasiness, with singer/guitarist Dave Heumann alternating crushing acid-laced guitar solos with belted vocals over repetitive grooves. Its the complementary nature of the bands sentiments more than their sounds that makes Aureola successful. While Hush Arbors gently melancholic folk comes from a world of foggy mountain walks and quiet late-night road trips, worlds removed from Arbouretums heavy landscapes, both projects have longing and displacement at their core. Singing out in exploration of feeling like a stranger to even the most familiar friends, looking for a place to be or finding that place and feeling disconnected from it as time moves on, each group takes a different sonic approach to sorting out the same world-weary feelings. | ||
 | Album: 6 of 8 Title: Coming Out of the Fog Released: 2013 Tracks: 8 Duration: 39:39 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Allmusic AlbumCover | 1 The Long Night (03:59) 2 Renouncer (04:55) 3 The Promise (05:08) 4 Oceans Dont Sing (05:33) 5 All At Once, The Turning Weather (06:46) 6 World Split Open (05:01) 7 Easter Island (02:45) 8 Coming Out of the Fog (05:28) |
| Coming Out of the Fog : Allmusic album Review : Calling something neo-classic rock might seem faintly ridiculous -- admittedly, it probably is. But the 21st century has served up a variety of those approaches in any number of corners, and Arbouretums Coming Out of the Fog is the latest in something of a new long tradition. Things start on a more stately and stirring approach with "The Long Night" rather than, say, arena boogie, but the quality of Dave Heumanns singing voice and the warm feeling of the arrangement, not to mention the demi-shred soloing over the rhythm sections careful pace, make for a good listen. Its a fine enough start, and the immediately following "Renouncer" might do all that even better, down to a solo that could almost be something from Robert Smith as from early-70s riffage days. But while there are some changes in pace here and there -- the quicker, tenser "The Promise"; the piano-led title track that concludes the album; the short, fierce instrumental "Easter Island" -- generally the album is a bit of a blur, shifting moods here and there without fully distinguishing itself track by track. As a uniform experience its not so bad, but its not as distinct or strong a collection as it could be. "Oceans Dont Sing," with its softly melancholic start and gentle vocal, stands out as a bit of calm balladry, a bit of steel guitar bringing in some country/cosmic American music feeling. | ||
 | Album: 7 of 8 Title: A Gourd of Gold Released: 2013-08-30 Tracks: 4 Duration: 00:00 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% AlbumCover | 1 The Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald (?) 2 Carefree Highway (?) 3 Protocol (?) 4 Early Morning Rain (?) |
 | Album: 8 of 8 Title: Song of the Rose Released: 2017-03-24 Tracks: 8 Duration: 04:24 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Allmusic AlbumCover | 1 Call Upon the Fire (?) 2 Comanche Moon (?) 3 Song of the Rose (?) 4 Absolution Song (?) 5 Dirt Trails (?) 6 Fall From an Eyrie (04:24) 7 Mind Awake, Body Asleep (?) 8 Woke Up on the Move (?) |
| Song of the Rose : Allmusic album Review : Few 21st century singers and songwriters have mastered the art of sounding sweetly bummed out as completely as Dave Heumann of Arbouretum, and if that seems like an esoteric talent, theres no denying his commitment to his craft. With each album from Arbouretum, Heumann reveals an even greater skill for baring his soul and evoking his weary sorrow, and 2017s Song of the Rose is no exception. This music lives in a no mans land between U.K. folk-rock of the 60s and 70s and hard rock before the genre was taken over by metal, and Arbouretum are capable of sounding big and powerful while employing a gentle touch that makes the music all the more emotionally resonant. Heumanns rough but eloquent guitar work lends these songs some rock & roll gravity without robbing them of their folky eloquence. And his bandmates -- Corey Allender on bass, Matthew Pierce on keyboards, and Brian Carey on drums -- help him fill out a surprisingly broad sonic canvas, and if the arrangements are concise, the results are admirably spacious. The lyrics dont always have the same clarity as the music, but even Heumanns more abstract moments feel intelligent and honestly felt in context, and the more direct statements of "Absolution Song" and "Comanche Moon" hit their targets decisively. The engineering by Steve Wright is superb, catching the performances with an unobtrusive clarity and adding a welcome sense of atmosphere when its needed. Song of the Rose wont do much for your next dance party, but if youre looking for music thats intelligent and introspective but still revels in the beauty of the world around us, then Arbouretum have made an album you need to hear. | ||