Fathom Lane - In the Driftless (2023)

This Minneapolis band Fathom Lane is a bit subtle. Folk music might be a pretty universal form, but that isn’t to say that geography doesn’t have a big part to play in the way it sounds. Folk music made in the rolling hills of southern England is likely to express pastoral moods and calmness, that made under Mediterranean skies, more full of life-affirming optimism, and that made by Fathom Lane is certainly, in part at least, the product of the sparse landscapes of the Midwestern prairies, of wide open spaces and the solace and solitude found there.

But the term folk music, broad as it is, is probably too confined a label to place on such cinematic music, taking in as it does gentle, alternative-pop accessibility, rock weight, more ornate progressive forms, dark and drifting ambience, bluesy spaciousness and experimentation. But genres are a thing of the past anyway. And rightly so.

And lyrically and thematically too, this is broad and majestic stuff, with all aspects of humanity found within, from the things that break us to those celebrations of life, from the things that we hold dear to the restlessness that makes us want to head into the horizons, pathos and nostalgia, obsession and addiction, love, loss and longing and everything in between. In short, life in all its grit and glory.

From the wonderfully romantic cover of Mary Cutrufello’s “Sad Songs and Waltzes Revisted” to the brooding and bruised rock moves of “The Lookout” and from the chiming, and indeed charming, country cool of “The Queen of All Hearts” to the cosmic acoustica of “Eye Oh Way”, musically Fathom Lane cover a lot of ground beyond the folk noir fingerprint that the songs seem to spring from.

With beautiful harmonies from Michael Ferrier and Ashleigh Still, instruments being wielded with deftness and delicacy, and words that are at once intimate and personal yet relatable and universally relevant, In The Driftless is an exercise in delivering maximum impact through the minimum of sound and solidity. An approach that more bands should explore.