Hush Arbors have drawn their musical blueprint around languid, atmospheric, folk-rock and full-bodied psychedelia that occasionally drifts into thundering hard rock, and for their third full-length album,
Yankee Reality, the band has found a more than sympathetic producer in
Dinosaur Jr. leader
J. Mascis.
Mascis co-produced
Yankee Reality with Justin Pizzoferrato and contributes guitar, drums, and Mellotron on a few tracks, and the results sound as if a kindred spirit is tagging along for some adventures in the green, leafy meadows of their music; this album may lack the monolithic force of
Dinosaur's best work, but the melodic structures (and Keith Wood's vocals style) in many respects recall
Mascis' more tuneful and restrained moments, and with a like-minded colleague at the controls, Hush Arbors have made one of their best works to date. Most of the tracks on
Yankee Reality move at a deliberate pace, but this band clearly knows where it's going, and the pastoral mood of songs like "Day Before," "Fast Asleep," and "So They Say" belies the emotional intensity that bubbles just below the surface. The guitar work from Wood and Leon Dufficy is low on flash, but sketches out the melodies with clean, bold strokes, and
Jason Ajemian's bass and Ryan Sawyer's percussion give the melodies a firm foundation and a gentle but insistent forward momentum. And while
Hush Arbors' folkie side dominates
Yankee Reality, the group still finds room for their electric guitars to make their presence felt as punctuation, and the closer, "Devil Made You High," is an exhilarating exercise in hard rock noisemaking that distills the melodic calm of the previous nine songs into one concentrated blast of power. Hush Arbors have focused their creative energies to superb effect on
Yankee Reality, and few albums with this much quiet possess the aural weight that makes this so satisfying. ~ Mark Deming