Across Tundras – Electric Relics (Electric Relics Records)
It can be frustrating for a listener when a band articulates a vision for their work that they can’t bring to fruition. Such was the case with the early years of Across Tundras, a Nashville by way of Colorado band whose initial albums were comprised of equal parts doomy dirge and expansive americana desert music. The idea behind these albums was a solid one, but the songs themselves were often marred by undeveloped songwriting and murky recordings that undermined what power the songs did contain. This isn’t to say that they were bad albums, only possessed of a potential that wasn’t wholly realized. However, each of the band’s subsequent releases has fortunately seen a marked improvement in their overall ability to actualize the concept behind their music, each one more soundly realized than the last.
Electric Relics is no exception to this consistant uptick in quality. Much like 2011’s Sage (one of the best things the band has yet created), the album is characterized by both a rough-hewn, folky melodic sense and a recording that is able to convey that despite the heaviness of the music. Unlike previous albums, though, there is far more versatility present on their most recent, with lumbering dirge giving way to spry Southern rock. This appellation, while appropriate, should hopefully not scare away anybody who might not normally consider such terminology a compliment – Electric Relics bears more in common with the rustic heavy psychedelia of U.S. Christmas than it does Molly Hatchet. The album is occasionally interspersed with some quieter acoustic moments that bear a resemblance to some of singer Tanner Olsen’s solo work. Said solo recordings likely had a strong influence on the steady and consistent improvement in the songwriting on recent Across Tundras albums, which isn’t to suggest that even his solo releases have been characterized by a single approach. A great many of them witness him working with experimental/drone forms, elements that would be interesting to see reflected as strongly in the full-band work as the quieter acoustic material. While Electric Relics may not maintain the singularly somber mood of some of the band’s older albums, the heaviness and atmosphere are still present, only now they find themselves deepened by the wider conceptual and emotional palette brought to bear on the work.
Similarly, the songs tend to rely on a wider variety of lyrical conceits than in previous work. Where an album like Sage or Dark Songs Of The Prairie often might seem to be a little self-consciously western and desert-themed, Electric Relics benefits from being considerably more oblique in its narratives. It sometimes focuses on the personal (“Pining For The Gravel Roads” and its reflections on nostalgia and the means by which memory can sometimes remain at arm’s length) and sometimes the mystical (such as with the references to Germanic/Norse mythology in “Solar Ark”). However, it always cut through with a sense of rootlessness, which can be more readily apparent in songs like “Driftless Caravan” and “Castaway,” but manages to find its way into much of the album’s lyrical content. This lyrical evolution doesn’t place Across Tundras’ new work at odds with any of their previous output, but it does offer a glimpse of the manner in which their songwriting ability has evolved and deepened.
Ultimately, though it’s a continuation of their larger body of work, Electric Relics represents the point at which Across Tundras has moved beyond the signifiers that have come to define much of their output to date. While their music remains heavy, and still evokes open space as well as anything they have yet done, the refinement of their approach has reshaped their desert-themed metal into that of a solid, yet largely underrated, rock and roll band, one that can play straightforward and visceral music without sacrificing intelligence or an experimental spirit, and can push at its boundaries without sacrificing quality or integrity.
