The Builders and The Butchers – Dead Reckoning [Album Review]

The Builders and The Butchers – Dead Reckoning [Album Review]: "

The Builders and The Butchers are back with their third effort, Dead Reckoning, and it picks up where Salvation Is A Deep Well left off. I recently described B&B as a blend between the ambitious lyrical content of The Decemberists with the dark gothic folky feel of O’Death. Dead Reckoning was recorded live in eight days with no overdubs and, other than a couple of violin parts, the boys played every last instrument on the album.

The setup and process seems to agree with them as the album has a very loose feel. A meaty stew of blues, folk, and gothic gospel (or as I like to call it – “gothpel”), the Portland-based outfit continue to churn out albums rich in vision. Lead singer Ryan Sollee:

Like our previous records, the settings of the songs follow a few main ideas: the father and the son, early 1900s America, absolute good and evil, addiction, and religion. On this album, I really thought a lot about the end of the world and the dark times we live in, how the feelings we feel and the world we experience is not that different from 1930s America, and I thought about the music that was created at that time. This is where the inspiration for these songs originated.

Their sound takes you to the turn of the century – a band of gypsies traveling town to town playing in a tent revival show, fronted by Sollee as some sort of warped preacher. “All Away,” a song without any percussion, would be the perfect benediction as you exit the tent. It’s only Sollee singing over an acoustic arrangement and it’s gorgeous in its dark, foreboding way. On Dead Reckoning, The Builders and The Butchers continue to carve out a genre defying niche. And for that I am thankful.

The Builders and The Butchers – Lullaby