I’ve had occasion more than once now to say I dig Lord Buffalo‘s second album, Tohu Wa Bohu, which is released this week through Blues Funeral Recordings, and hey, here’s one more before the thing actually comes out. It’s fitting the Austin, Texas, four-piece’s dug-in heavy Americana ethic that the video they’d make and put out closest to the record’s arrival is live, and that it’s performed somewhat differently from what’s actually on said record, and that it’s for a deep cut, down on side B rather than something frontloaded onto side A like some outfits do. It is, then, an invitation to dig further.

In the live version of “Dog Head,” some more of the All Them Witches vocal influence comes through, but that violin is sweet and sad and it seems to carry its own melody for the voice to play soulfully off of in full-on earlier-Woven Hand fashion, all the while a swell of tone and rhythm builds up around it and seems to consume the entire thing by the time it’s done. There’s no piano, as there is in the studio incarnation of “Dog Head,” and there’s a part of me that misses that crash of the keys here, but you can only be in so many places playing so many instruments at one time, and Lord Buffalo have clearly positioned themselves well. It works, is all I’m saying.

And guess what? I dig the album. It’s out Friday.

Enjoy the video:

Lord Buffalo, “Dog Head” official video

Live version of “Dog Head” by Lord Buffalo. Performed at Breathing Rhythm Studio, August 3rd, 2019. Recorded and mixed by Steve Boaz. Filmed and edited by Brian Blackwood.

Studio version of Dog Head appears on the album “Tohu Wa Bohu” Available March 27th, 2020 from Blues Funeral Recordings.

Austin, TX dark rock / post-Americana band Lord Buffalo will release its new LP, ‘Tohu Wa Bohu’, on March 27 via Blues Funeral Recordings. Recorded in Lockhart, TX with producer Danny Reisch (Chelsea Wolfe, Okkervil River) and mastered by Dave Shirk (Mastodon, Sun Ra), the album is the follow-up to the folk-psych group’s 2017 self-titled full length.

“Dog Head” is a song from our new LP, ‘Tohu Wa Bohu’, and while the album version begins as a dark, downtempo piano creeper, we’d been doing the song live with an extended intro of bowed guitar and violin,” says vocalist / guitarist Daniel Jesse Pruitt. “Lord Buffalo songs often come out a little different every night, and we wanted to capture a little of that with this live-in-studio version of ‘Dog Head’. ‘Dog Head’ begins with a drone of bowed guitar and violin and the holds to the low road until the switch gets flipped and fuzzed-out guitar breaks in to end the piece with an exclamation point. The end gets chaotic, the song comes off the tracks a bit, but the heaviness feels redemptive, a release from the previous dirge.”

Lord Buffalo are:
G.J. Hellman
P.J. Patterson
Yamal Said
D.J. Pruitt

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Tags: Austin, Blues Funeral Recordings, Lord Buffalo, Lord Buffalo Tohu Wa Bohu, Texas, Tohu Wa Bohu

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 24th, 2020 at 7:22 am and is filed under Bootleg Theater. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.