Having narrowly missed out on reviewing Wayfarer’s recent well-received American Gothic, I figured I was overdue for a bit of dark Americana, and here it is, in the form of Blues for Neighbors, all the way from erm, Poland. Yeah, honestly I’m confused by that as well, but then my last review was Ershetu’s Xibalba, a concept album about concept of death in Mayan culture, and they’re French and Norwegian, so let’s not hold it against Blues for Neighbors. After all, the description on Bandcamp claims that they “sit in a kitchen, smoke cigarettes and worship old ghosts with cursed folk blues notes. They love nature, freedom, chaos and old books that smell with dust and they don’t really like mankind”. Which I can absolutely get on board with, and it certainly sounds Americana-y enough for me.

First things first, because some people won’t get beyond this point: Funeral Piles and Gallows is very much not a metal album. And in fairness, it’s not claiming to be. It’s listed as dark folk/Americana, which is considerably more accurate than some albums that have crossed my desk over my press career. Might also be worth taking a closer look at what folk means to you as well, because this is folk in the North American tradition, and those of us over the pond might consider it to be closer to something like skiffle or straight blues.

Now, normally when I have to include this much context about an album, that usually means I have issues with it, it’s not very good, and/or it’s just plain not what it’s being peddled as. None of those apply here, it’s honestly just not the sort of album I expected to stumble across in the course of writing for Ave Noctum. As aforementioned, dark folk/Americana is an accurate description of what’s going on here, and a lot of the classic hallmarks of the blues and American folk music in general are here: the twang (both musical and vocal), the repetitive, hypnotic quality pounding away (to the point where each track slides seamlessly into the next unless you’re really playing attention), raw, lo-fi production that sounds for all the world like it could’ve been recorded in a suitable dive bar, and thin, metallic, scratchy melodies that skitter about on the top like a spider on ice. The only credits I can find list vocals, guitar and synth, but there’s definitely a harmonica (real or synthesised, I can’t say) and drums of some description in the mix, exactly as you’d expect for the genre.

I’m not going to go through this track by track, because honestly if this is your thing, you already know roughly what you’re in for, and Blues for Neighbors don’t deviate from the formula all that much across the album. Equally, if jingly jangly bluesy folk sounds like your idea of hell, November was a good month for new releases, and I’d go find another one. Also, the few solid musical touchstones I have for this style are a little eclectic to say the least: my dad went through a lengthy Cajun and zydeco phase when I was a child, and I was a captive audience in the car on the way to my grandmother’s, I’ve recently got into The Carolina Chocolate Drops, and after seeing them at Cropedy one year, I’ve long had a soft spot for Mark Kermode’s ‘secret’ skiffle band The Dodge Brothers. And yes, that is the actual Mark Kermode. So, in as much as it measures up to my existing “knowledge” of this sort of American folk (I use the term knowledge very loosely), it’s a decent slice of dark, brooding Americana, and no, you’d never guess it was actually made in the wilds of Poland.

There’s a few tracks in here that stand out, both in good ways and the opposite, like Before The Rooster Crows and Tombstone are solid tracks and obvious choices for The Singles, whereas Where Chilly Wind Blows probably sounded like a great idea in someone’s head, but really doesn’t work in reality. Essentially the formula here is a fragile creature, and it works most of the time, but it’s easily overwhelmed when Blues for Neighbors wander off too far in any single direction. Like a lot of things out there, it’s worth listening to once, but whether you ever go back will depend on how you feel about the genre as a whole.

(6.5/10 Ellie)

https://www.facebook.com/BluesFN

https://bluesfn.bandcamp.com/album/funeral-piles-and-gallows