Haw (LP)

Haw is Hiss Golden Messenger's second offering for Paradise of Bachelors. It is titled alternately for a river in North Carolina and for a now extinct Indian tribe from the same region. The band, originally just songwriter/vocalist/guitarist M.C. Taylor and guitarist/bassist Scott Hirsch, has become a quintet. The set features over half a dozen guests, including guitarist William Tyler. These 11 songs are drenched in eternal themes: faith, dread, family, spirituality, and metaphor. They are musically rooted in the traditions of the American South -- folk, bluegrass, swampy rock, country gospel, warped R&B -- and offer strange twists and turns on them all.

The band effortlessly embodies the traditions of country, folk, rock, and bluegrass simultaneously to support his delivery. Throughout these songs, Taylor's lyrics and the grain in his voice reveal that, whatever truths there are in these songs, they come from antiquity, and the land itself, which is an extension of the divine. They are merely articulated through his experience, not his own wisdom. The many different musics on Haw are familiar, timeless; they can be endlessly recombined for new purposes. But HGM stand out because they don't combine them so much as play them simultaneously and inseparably as part of a single tradition. In a decade or two, Haw will sound as warm, clear, and spooky as it does today. - AllMusic