You know, I thought sHEAVY’s Steve Hennessey had the Ozzy-sound-a-like market cornered, but Freedom Hawk’s T.R. Morton has every bit the bat head-biting chords Hennessey does. But where sHEAVY is cosmically monolithic, Freedom Hawk is demonically earthy, blazing a path of accelerated doom-groove on dirty wheels of steel, thus drawing a more staunch comparison to Black Sabbath and solo-era Ozzy. I mean, it’s nothing new for a stoner rock band to sound like Sabbath, but Holding On, the Virginia band’s second full-length album, takes it one step beyond, greasing the riffs up with just enough metal melody to give ‘em a commercially viable hard rock sound. That’s not to say it doesn’t deserve your particular attention, because it does; what it means is that Freedom Hawk is better and heavier than, say, a Fireball Ministry or Big Rig, and flexes every single musical muscle they have on songs like “Thunderfoot,” “Living for Days,” “North Swell,” and “Indian Summer,” which command your attention, like an iron grip ’round your throat, with that aforementioned Sabbath power, and some Fu Manchu gusto and Generous Maria electricism, too. When they’re not sounding like Cluth (“Bandito”) or Candlemass (“Faded”), that is. Pure POWER is what is, man, plain and simple.
Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan Hawk
Vanguard Records
Yeah, okay, so the folksy, sultry tunes of Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan don’t exactly fall in with the rank and file of doom, metal, and stoner rock that you usually find around here, but the fact of the matter is — if you don’t know this already — Lanegan is a bad-ass, whiskey-voiced deity in the Broken Beard universe. The guy could put out a polka record and I’d still tell you about it because everything he touches (Screaming Trees, The Gutter Twins, Soulsavers, etc.) turns to pure grit, which is what makes his collaborations with Isobel Campbell so great. She, former member of indie pop band Belle & Sebastian, is innocence incarnate, the Scottish girl-next-door with the porcelain voice, and he is the brooding American desperado at the end of the bar. Put ‘em together and you get an old suitcase full of black and white photographs, tear-stained love letters, faded memories, long distance calls from a phone booth in the middle of nowhere, and wordless nights on a porch swing. Hawk, their third album together, is a whole barn full o’ jukebox flare, rustling up a roving range of country-folk, blues, soul, gospel, and Americana, calling to mind the eras and auras of Cash and Carter, Dylan and Baez. Campell’s songwriting on Hawk is utterly moving, playing emotion better than any instrument on the album, and is at once light, languid, deep, and desolate. To help the mood along, the album also offers a few Townes Van Zandt covers and a couple of appearances by Willy Mason. But, as always, this is the Campbell and Lanegan show, which continues to be the strangest, most beautiful show on earth.
Check out the video for “You Won’t Le Me Down Again” from Hawk!
Freedom Hawk
Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan