Brown Horse are the sort of band you’ll find performing in a random roadside bar and think they have been playing in that exact spot before they were born. Yet you’d believe the same if you saw them elsewhere. Are they Sisyphean-bound? Must I imagine them happy, Camus? Because they sure sound maudlin, as if something is on their minds, a melancholy spreads throughout the record like ice on a blacktop. For certain, they follow the signs that will lead them to the next dive bar. There, the divine manifests as scrappy chords and alcohol. Like a vesper, a congregation gathers to hear their doubts answered and fired back at them like cannonballs.
Why the preamble? Well, the road is what Norwich-based band Brown Horse are preoccupied with (along with other subjects, of course). Their last LP, All the Right Weaknesses (2024), was recorded after a multi-month European tour, and Total Dive, their third in three years, is a road album. Whether you are Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, or an inveterate touring act such as Brown Horse, you’ll know the road. Therefore, it makes sense that it will seep into your songwriting, as a potent metaphor or an ill-defined veneer.
Listen to Total Dive, and you could be on the road with them. “Heavy weather driving / Revving the engine at the lights / Dead fox on the roadside / Lit up its eyes as we passed by,” Patrick Turner intones in “Heavy”, as if the words strike him as inevitable, a deal he has struck with the devil, who has been sitting on his ass since his pact with Robert Johnson.
After their country-rock debut Reservoir, Brown Horse metaphorically walked out of saloon doors like Belle Starr to the frontier, where they established a new sound: fuzz-soaked guitars that echoed R.E.M., bolstered by sinuous Crazy Horse-esque riffs. Now, Brown Horse have released their loudest and bleakest record to date, in which muscular guitars, walloping drums, and thumping pedal steels converge and erupt like a volcano.
Brown Horse have carved out an inimitable aesthetic: Americana with a sci-fi subtext—think Kurt Vonnegut stuck in a prairie and looking for Godot, or something like that. In any case, Brown Horse are in conversation with the past or the past is in conversation with them: history blows through Turner’s mouth and Emma Tovell’s blistering pedal steel, as if their tale is someone else’s and that someone else’s is theirs. History moves backwards and forwards, anywhere and everywhere.
Despite their newfound sonority, Brown Horse cannot assuage their sorrow with rage—in fact, “Sorrow Reigns” is the title of the opener. Like a hurricane, the track begins with pounding drums and a searing pedal steel over which Turner is barely able to deliver the words, as if they are too heavy for him, as if the sorrow is too much to bear. Lyrically, a man beats another, with all the pain he has accumulated over a lifetime. Why? “Just because he can,” Patrick Turner says matter-of-factly, like the narrator of Bruce Springsteen’s “Nebraska”. Or perhaps Brown Horse went direct to the source: the Southern Gothic writer Flannery O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”.
If not singing about being on the road, driving through an industrial landscape or a phantasmagorical wasteland, Brown Horse captures the minutiae of everyday life, as if they have swapped magic realist writer Richard Brautigan for writer Joy Williams, whose stories are less about grand revelations than about small moments. For instance, in the bouncy “Twisters”, you will hear of “Hear the crackle of a coffee pot / Hear the sound of a closing door”. Moreover, you will notice Patrick Turner’s different vocal approach, which he adopts throughout the album: heavy and ragged, not unlike Richard Buckner, though still containing a wistful beauty.
The accordion-laced “Comeback Loading”, with its atmospheric pedal steel, is about separation—a motif of the record—and alludes to two Springsteen tracks, “Thunder Road” and “Darkness on the Edge of Town”. The slow-burner “Hares” is an affirmation of life, despite being weighed down by sadness; it ends with a scratchy and poignant violin. There is a spiritual collapse on the album, in which characters realize their limitations, and, instead of reacting against it, let it define them. Thus, nihilism creeps in to the point that you can hear it in Turner’s voice.
Like All the Right Weaknesses, the lyrics on Total Dive are written by each of the four members of Brown Horse: Patrick Turner: vocals, electric guitar; Emma Tovell: bass, pedal steel, lap steel, banjo; Nyle Holihan: guitar, banjo, bass; Rowan Braham: organ, piano, accordion. Also, support comes from Ben Rodwell (drums) and Neve Cariad (backing vocals). The album misses Phoebe Troup, whose backing vocals on All the Right Weaknesses made such an impact and acted as a counterbalance to Turner’s melancholic croon. That said, the LP is introspective and darker; thus, it suits having fewer backing vocals.
The start of “Heart of the Country” echoes Springsteen’s “Youngstown” with its accordion, not to mention the mandolin arriving like Levon Helm of the Band. “Wreck” is infused with a resonant country guitar and a spectral organ, underpinned by a lachrymose pedal steel—it could be from the album, Ohia: The Magnolia Electric Co. by Songs: Ohia. “Watching Something Burn Up”, the last song on the record, is an overcooked piece; it fails to capture the drama it attempts to imply, due to being self-conscious.
Three albums in three years, Brown Horse are refusing to slow down; they are singing with their eyes on the rear-view mirror and are swinging like barroom punches. Obviously, Total Dive is different from All the Right Weaknesses, and rightly so. Brown Horse should be praised for their evolution. Whereas the former is introspective and darker, yet more thematically consistent, the latter is varied and playful. Although the former is a step down from the latter, if Brown Horse didn’t have such high standards, Total Dive would be a career highlight for most bands.
Brown Horse could be the heirs to Silver Jews and Jason Molina; they have that much potential and talent. In fact, their voices are the ghosts of the past. “Luke the Drifter to Zimmerman / Line drive to keep the team alive,” Molina intones in “The Big Game Is Every Night”. Indeed, Brown Horse are driving to keep the team alive.