ACROSS TUNDRAS – Old World Wanderer

By Brian Krasman

Two things are apparent when listening to “Old World Wanderer,” the latest album from ACROSS TUNDRAS. First, the Tanner Olson-led band sounds well traveled, as if their world weariness has educated them and given the fellows wisdom many bands that are their colleagues do not have. Second, taking in their music is a fitting moment for a cold ale, not because you’ve tired or frustrated, but because you can almost feel the deep parch in the narrator’s voice, the gritty film that lines the tonsils that can only be washed back by something chilled and relaxing.

Yes, the band has done its fair share of mileage, especially when it comes to the Midwestern United States (they now claim Nashville as homebase), and their music, which tends to be sludgy, noisy and psychedelic, also can make you feel like you do when you hear the barbed strains of CRAZY HORSE or even the folk threads of CROSBY, STILLS, NASH, and YOUNG (and yes, that version specifically). Dark prairies and stagecoach drama certainly can be part of the mix, yet so can nighttime stargazing and numb-chested slumber once those brews fully impact the bloodstream.

“Old World” also happens to be the finest piece of ACROSS TUNDRAS’ catalog, which contains a handful of efforts, many of them built from pieces of 2008’s “Western Sky Ride.” These seven cuts belong together and should be absorbed as such, meaning you’re not likely to find any break-off cuts for a mix, but that’s good because the world contains too many individual morsels. The journey begins on “Vanguard Battle Hymn,” which blends right into the hippie strains of “Fallin’ to the Nethers,” where Olson reasons, “Hope for no heaven, pray for no hell.”

“Stone Crazy Horse” has a bit of a rollicking country rock feel, so expect a dust up once that one hits; “Life on the Grain Belt” has some guitar chugging and hissing, like Neil Young gone doom; and closer “Rainmaker-Floodreaper” has a spiritual essence, with trippy, thick sitar built in, and what seems like a storm cloud swelling above. All of this serves well the quote on the album’s sleeve – “When your broken engine stalls on long deserted tracks, take a walk through a nameless town.” You do that here. You feel the old ghosts, hear the echoes of past standoffs, smell the aged gunpowder, and sense there’s so much more to understand than what the surface offers. It’ll make that beer taste all the better, while you escape in your horse-drawn easy chair and past the gates of an abandoned village with its own story to tell.

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