Six Organs of Admittance - Shelter from the Ash Album Review

Six Organs of Admittance
Shelter from the Ash
Drag City
Album Review

Six Organs of Admittance is effectively a side-project for Ben Chasny, a guitarist who plies his trade in several indie bands. However, it is clearly not an occasional affair, as Shelter from the Ash is his tenth album in ten years. His music so far has been primarily acoustic guitar-based hypnotic indie, with a droning soundscape characterising his sound.

Shelter from the Ash takes a step forward in listenability and mesmeric intensity, and a step further away from the experimental. It even introduces electric guitar to great effect on a couple of songs, reflecting a great sense of confidence in the underlying songs. Strangled Road is one of the best songs Chasny has recorded, a dark Iron and Wine-like song that atypically builds on a verse-chorus-verse structure. Elsewhere, there are great dollops of the kind of intensity that reward the Pavement listener.

This is still a long way from X Factor, and it repays attention - over a few listens, it starts to make a lot more sense. However, it is hard to escape the feeling that Chasny's not quite the guitarist he thinks he is. Shelter suggests there is a songwriter in there when the trills and fretboard runs are removed, and those pieces are the ones that glimmer.

Rating 7/10

Mike Rea