Freakwater - Scheherazade (2016)

When Freakwater made their first recordings in the late '80s, they set a template that would serve them well for the next 27 years: a darkly austere country sound rooted in the sisterly harmonies of Catherine Irwin and Janet Beveridge Bean. Making good use of a minimal backing band—often just their own guitars and an upright bass, with flourishes of pedal steel and electric guitar—they updated the downcast vocals of the Carter Family and wrote songs set in some alternate-reality American past. It seemed like there was a ghost or a corpse on every album. Freakwater had a simple, yet powerful palette to match the Appalachian gothic tone, and that combination has kept the band alive and relevant even as many of their alt-country peers have fallen by the wayside. Their best albums—especially 1995’s Old Paint—sound less like products of a particular scene and more like the sepia-toned recordings of eccentric artists dislocated from history.

Even when they’ve put a full decade between albums, Bean and Irwin have never strayed far from their recognizable sound or their bleak subject matter. But on Scheherazade, their eighth album overall and their first since 2005, they overhaul it dramatically: For the first time since they recorded demos in the Bean's parents’ basement, they ventured out of Chicago and recorded in Louisville, the city with which the band has long been identified. They also recruited a slew of Northern Kentucky musicians, including Sarah Balliet from Murder by Death, Morgan Geer form Drunken Prayer, and Evan Patterson of Young Widows. Noted Louisville resident Will Oldham doesn’t show up, disproving my theory that he is required by law to play on every local release. On the other hand, Warren Ellis of the Dirty Three and the Bad Seeds does play violin and flute.

It’s the largest cast and crew they’ve assembled under the Freakwater banner, and as a result, Scheherazade sounds fuller and looser, a bit rougher around the edges, with more rock in the arrangements. It’s their most cinematic album yet, with the music functioning almost as a soundtrack to Irwin and Bean’s short, violent songs. On the very first song, "What the People Want," somebody throws a baby down a well, accompanied by tense swirls of strings. On "Down Will Come Baby," they rewrite the old, twisted lullaby "Rock-a-bye Baby," and the band navigates a series of key changes that lends a vertiginous effect, as though the cradle is in freefall.

The presence of so many imperiled infants on Scheherazade is oddly reassuring, a nice reminder that this is a Freakwater album after all. The tight harmonies that marked their previous efforts here come slightly unraveled; they sing against each other as often as with each other. These are some of their most visceral performances, as rough-hewn on quiet numbers like "Ghost Song" as one heavier numbers like "Take Me With You," which features roof-raising hollers by Bean. There’s something invigorating about hearing two alt-country veterans take apart their tried-and-true sound and reassemble it slightly askew, and Scheherazade is not only their most modern-sounding record; it might be their best since Old Paint.