STEVE VON TILL - A Grave Is a Grim Horse

Light years away from the whirlwinds of post-metal violence conjured with Neurosis, Steve Von Till's solo career dwells in the depths of a dark, aching folk-rock; often lengthy compositions steeped in a heavy spleen, expressed through acoustic, almost minimal melodies that made "As The Crow Flies" and "If I Should Fall To The Field" two of the most compelling singer-songwriter records of the early 2000s.

"A Grave Is A Grim Horse" arrives six years after its predecessor, a period spent on side projects (Harvestman, Culper Ring) and three releases with Neurosis (the latest being last year's "Given To The Rising"), and lands at the same time as the second solo album by Scott Kelly, his bandmate in the main outfit.

While Kelly stays on terrain of acoustic simplicity, just guitar and voice, Von Till refines his approach, abandoning the sparseness of the previous album in favor of a fuller sound, with orchestrations that, though minimal and still mostly acoustic, add an extra touch to his ballads — a perfect example being "Willow Tree", caressed by strings and dotted with faint flickers of electronic light.

Hushed but not always shadowy, "A Grave Is a Grim Horse" conjures moments of absolute delicacy: the lap steel of "Looking For Dry Land", the strings of the splendid Drake-esque cover "Clothes Of Sand", or the tender "Promises", once Lyle Lovett's.

If the album occasionally loses a bit of steam in places ("Brigit's Cross", "Gravity", or the super-slow-motion country of "Western Song"), elsewhere it manages to conjure spine-tingling atmospheres, like the infernal march of the title track, somewhere between Lanegan and Danzig, or the wondrous, almost alien wasteland sketched out in "Valley Of The Moon".

The world painted by Steve Von Till's music is well captured by the album cover: more than a dark gloom, it's a dreamlike, haunted forest, in whose mist faint halos of light radiate to guide us along the path and offer reassurance.

Steve Von Till has grown, managing to refine his style, enriching it and moving it away from that extremely stark mode of expression which, over time, risked becoming repetitive and losing its bite.

Polished yet unvarnished, intense and heartfelt, "A Grave Is A Grim Horse" is one of the finest folk singer-songwriter records of the year.

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05/09/2008