Or, The Whale
Light Poles and Pines
Seany
It’s nice to know someone still makes country music like they used to. Or, the Whale mixes soaring harmony, social responsibility and steel guitar and sounds like a lonesome lover up in the cab of an 18 wheeler. It’s not complicated music, at least not when you listen to it the first time. A simple acoustic guitar, drum and pedal steel supports a melodic harmony on “Call and Response” as they sing about bravely rebuilding a city on sinking ground, already 20 feet below sea level. That’s the sort of gloriously irresponsible action that propels so many country songs and so many musical ballads. The record continues on in this vein with odd instruments popping up to punctuate the melody – there’s a saw lurking in cut two, and a harmonium, a glockenspiel, and even an omnichord, whatever that might be. Or, the Whale fuses all the traditional forms of the rural working class, producing a sound that is both new and exciting, and old and reassuring.
Or, the Whale: http://www.orthewhale.com
