Boise, Idaho’s Ealdor Bealu will issue their second LP, Spirit of the Lonely Places, next Saturday, July 20, with a hometown release show at the Neurolux Lounge. “Smoke Signals” is the centerpiece of the five-track/39-minute offering, and it represents well the rich, smooth-flowing textures the four-piece hone throughout, maintaining a heft of tone and presence alike, weaving currents of mood and songcraft together to create something that feels in conversation with the Rocky Mountains without being outright Americana. It is heavy in spirit and execution, in other words, and a work that engages naturalism on multiple fronts. The video, following a river upstream toward its source, showing amber waves of grain, tall trees and the many threatened faces of nature, emphasizes this central communion well, but it’s in the music no less vividly than in the visual accompaniment below.

That’s true of the entirety of Spirit of the Lonely Places as well. As the midpoint cut, “Smoke Signals” follows opener “Sink Like Stone” and the subsequent “Firebird,” the two shortest songs at a respective 6:53 and 6:39, which present the initial fluidity of the album and the subtle care put into the arrangements both of the instruments and the vocal duties shared by guitarist Carson Russell and bassist Rylie Collingwood, who, after Russell fronts the pastoral post-rock of “Sink Like Stone,” comes to the fore in “Firebird” and leads the way with soaring echoes through a kind of terrestrial space rock, still of the land but not necessarily attached psychically to it. In Russell and Travis Abbott‘s guitars, there’s a winding central progression that drummer Craig Hawkins gives both a forward shove and a swinging emphasis, the song hitting into a fervent wall of fuzz before coming apart behind the lead guitar line. With the first direct vocal tradeoff between Russell and Collingwood, “Smoke Signals” pulls as well from the drift and the push, its placement seeming all the more purposeful after the opening salvo as it builds toward and moves through its classic-feeling solo in the second half.

“Smoke Signals” also becomes a focal point for the transition it provides into the second half of the LP. In the nine-minute “Isolation” and eight-minute closing cover of Aphrodite’s Child‘s “The Four Horsemen,” Ealdor Bealu broaden the scope of Spirit of the Lonely Places as though they wanted to emphasize each keyword in the title itself: the spirit, the loneliness, and the feeling of place. “Isolation” is a singular triumph for its molten, dirt-colored psychedelic roll as well as the willful melodic meandering of its early stretch and the interplay between vocalists, let alone the payoff brought to bear later — which finds Collingwood indulging a few lines of blackened screams overtop — and the finale launches with an initial build into a fuzz-caked groove only to recede again into chime-laced atmospheridelia and emerge even more graceful for a last solo and chorus together that close out the record in, admittedly, one of its least lonely-seeming moments. Perhaps at the end of things there’s some solace after all, even if that’s derived from classic prog.

How blessed are, and so on.

Ealdor Bealu bill themselves as a heavy psych band, and that’s fair enough, but really just the start of what they have on offer with their second record. It is an earthy and progressive style that manifests the consideration obviously put into its making, and its textures go beyond the haphazard wizardry that “psychedelic” sometimes implies, though no doubt they met with their share of happy accidents along the way and Spirit of the Lonely Places is more organic as a result. It is not a record that will resonate with everyone but that some will find something very special within. The more I hear it, the more I think of myself in that camp.

Enjoy the video:

Ealdor Bealu, “Smoke Signals” official video

Spirit of the Lonely Places, the sophomore full-length album by Boise, ID Heavy-Psych Quartet Ealdor Bealu, out worldwide on vinyl/digital on 7/20/19.

Carson Russell: Guitars, Vocals
Rylie Collingwood: Bass, Vocals
Travis Abbott: Guitars
Craig Hawkins: Drums, Percussion

Videography: Willis Hall
Director: Carson Russell
Editor: Carson Russell

AUDIO CREDITS
Recorded/Mixed: Andy A. // THE CHOP SHOP (Boise, ID)
Mastered: Brad Boatright // AUDIOSIEGE MASTERING (Portland, OR)
Music: Travis Abbott
Lyrics: Carson Russell and Rylie Collingwood
Performance: Ealdor Bealu

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Ealdor Bealu on Bandcamp

Tags: Boise, Ealdor Bealu, Ealdor Bealu Spirit of the Lonely Places, Idaho, Spirit of the Lonely Places, Unsigned bands

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 10th, 2019 at 9:43 am and is filed under Bootleg Theater. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.