The Dead Tongues is the project of singer-songwriter Ryan Gustafson from North Carolina. A sometimes-solo project, here Gustafson is joined by a full band who provide drums, bass and fiddle to his guitar, banjo, harmonium, mellotron, and harmonica. This allows Gustafson to pull influence from all corners of traditional American music to create a sound that’s at once pastoral and a little rockin’, an authentic sound that leans as much on the old-timey troubadors as it does on the folk rock of today. On his new album Montana, the third under The Dead Tongues moniker, Gustafson takes us on a journey of songs that feels like a patchwork of these influences, and an expertly-crafted patchwork at that. It’s at times heartfelt and emotive, others strange and fevered, always rooted in the landscape in which it was born, always distinctly American.
‘Graveyard Fields’ puts some rock and some blues into the classic country formula, lazy electric guitars buzzing around like big fat flies in the late afternoon. The track is about locations near his home in North Carolina, namely the Pisgah National Forest near Asheville and an area called Black Balsam Knob, and is imbued with a decidedly Appalachian brand of creeping mysticism. “I see a dead moon rising, over graveyard fields” Gustafson sings, “I see a dead moon rising from the top of a hill, and I feel like I’m drowning in my own wishing well”. Just one track in and fans of Phosphorescent’s more recent countrified work will already find lots to like. Follow-up ‘Empire Builder’ is spangled with banjo and lyrics about leaving the state on the Empire Line and and taking to the high seas, while ‘Black Flower Blooming’ is one if the album’s most straightforward singer songwriter folk songs, all wrapped up in evocative country instrumentation.
“Got a way out and climbed the highest mountaintop
thought about walking down then took to jumping off
grew some wings and flew away with ketamine
looking back to her those days are like a bad dream”
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‘The Gold Is Deep’ is a banjo-led back-porch folk song that wobbles into psych territory, its reverberating vocals like the pleasant but delusional visions of striking rich that flicker in shimmering campfire flames. ‘My Companion’ sounds like a classic party folk song, the banjo joined by fiddle a, while ‘Capitol Blues’ is a sparse instrumental. There’s a real backwoods country feel on ‘Wildflower Perfume’, in which the narrator takes a flower to remind him of home, before another instrumental ‘Nostalgia’ rises from its ashes. My current favourite, ‘Stained Glass Eyes’, has more than a shade of Dylan, a folk song that feels urgent and impassioned and reverberates in your soul, the streams of lyrics working on multiple levels, from basic gut-level poetry to lofty metaphysical musings.
“Fifth wind brought a howl got me in a storm
I saw a lighthouse spinning at the edge of the world
like looking through a window to the day
I was born”
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If that sounds as good to you as it does to me, you’ll probably want to check out this outdoors performance too. All that’s left then is for ‘Embers of Midnight’ to end on a lighter tone, a wistful, lonely-cowboy country track. “Ships set sail on clouds of grey,” he sings. “I close my eyes for a moment’s escape / Out of the hills into the blue, my silver star is fading”.
Montana is a great album and a must for anyone who likes their folk kinda strange and beamed out of the hills of Appalachia. You can buy it now from The Dead Tongues Bandcamp page.