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This solo outing from Nate Hall, founding member of Western North Carolina's heavy-psych sextet US Christmas, is spare, haunting and lonely. That's a big contrast to his band's music, which thunders along, propelled by two drumsets. The Neurot-signed US Christmas delivers longform hard blues with smoked-out patience; the sheer electrical drain of the band's gear has been known to knock out the power in clubs. Without the walls of amps and that juggernaut percussion, we find Hall half-awake, half-defeated, yet still trudging through the world on A Great River.
This isn't just 40 minutes of one dude with an acoustic guitar. Hall sends his world-weary voice through layers of delay. And when he does play acoustic, there's always a distant, storm-like crunch of heavily-distorted guitar below it. It's an uncomfortable, restless listen — an experimental mope through asymmetrical guitarscapes, a dark night of the rural soul.
"Raw Chords" finds Hall in a strange town, depressed and missing his kids. Yet what could be an ambient wash of resignation, a la Neil Young's "On the Beach," ends up dark, sullen, and claustrophobic. "When the Stars Begin to Fall" is a damaged apocalyptic hymn, sung in imperfect a capella over a bed of found sound. And the chorus of "Dark Star" suggests the melody and progression of a Pink Floyd song as altered by a badly-damaged psyche. "Maybe I'll go insane/ got to stop the pain," he sings in "Kathleen."
If this record's anything, it's self-therapy, and Hall's letting us listen in. And if he's reaching for something, it's nothing transcendental or lofty, not on this downtrodden LP. This is more like a desperate cry for common dignity. A Great River isn't a casual listen, not by miles. It's a strange and hopeless document, and that may be where the beauty lies.
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