'Arbor Labor Union was born from a peach tree in Georgia in the American south. They play psychedelic, repetitious and joyful Rock and Roll music. In 2014 they released the album Sings For You Now under the name Pinecones. In 2016 they decided to change their name in order to form a more perfect union. A union of sound and vision. With this, they had a new album, a masterpiece of modern guitar music entitled simply I Hear You. I Hear You was crafted through the ancient process of collaboration. All four members brought their love to one another and turned it into song. The album plays like a freedom chant. You can hear laughter in their music. You can see the joy among them. All that is left to do is listen. Listen to this album dedicated to listeners And should your response also be, 'I hear you the band replies, 'affirmative loud and clear,'
Arbor Labor Union press release (2016).
I was mightily impressed when I first heard I Hear You, a couple of years after its release. It seemed the work of a band who utterly refused to comply to the modern set of rules laid down over how to go about making and marketing your music. Theirs was a deeply refreshing approach. They seemed much more organically rooted than other contemporary bands, in their case in the cultural, literary and musical traditions of the region that spawned them. Namely, Georgia and the American South. Since then I wondered sometimes what happened to them but honestly thought little more of them until I was pleased to hear a few weeks back that they were returning with their first album for four years at the beginning of February. This time on Arrowhead rather than Sub Pop Records.
And here it is. New Petal Instants a declamatory and utterly joyous beast that marches determinedly to the beat of its own drum for the course of the best part of forty five minutes and ten songs of hedonistic, thrillingly disciplined Rock and Roll that reach and sustain wonderful peaks of hypnotic majesty.
How to describe the formula they work from. Because it is a formula. The band have come up with a process that each track here conforms to to lesser or greater degrees without actually repeating themselves, simply because the spell they cast is so inspired and evidently works. Firstly, the songs are forged on spiralling, duelling guitar patterns, reminiscent of Television, Lynyrd Skynrd, The Allman Brothers and Creedence. That in itself should be enough to excite your interest. It sounded good on I Hear You but on New Petal Instants the band have forged a new ecstatic intensity that you'll do well do hear the equal of anywhere else at this point in time.
So far so good, but what elevates the record further and towards genuine greatness is the dreamlike Southern sensibility and consciousness that flows incessantly like lifeblood on New Petal Instants. Vocalist Bo Orr spouts a stream of conscious found, raving poetry throughout, utterly nonsensical yet making perfect sense at one and the same time. Quite fluent in the rhythms and folklore of the mythic Deep South. So you have the American Civil War, Brer Rabbit, Mark Twain, William Faulkner, Carson McCullers, Flannery O'Connor, Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, In The Heat of The Night, Deliverance, Hap and Leonard.
You also have the aforementioned Lynyrds and Allmans. Doug Sahm, The Creedence of Ramble Tamble and Born on The Bayou, the R.E.M. of Fables, Dream Syndicate, Butthole Surfers, Black Lips and more. I've been a sucker for this stuff since I first read The Heart is a Lonely Hunter when I was fifteen. It's great to see it all so thrillingly realised here in 2020.
The band are clearly having a wail of a time, but there's also a fierce discipline at work. Everything on show is drenched with a clanging, messianic fervour. Most songs restrict themselves to three to five minute running times when they could easily spiral out to two or three times that length. But on both sides of the record Arbor Labor Union are working their way doggedly up a slope to the crescendos they arrive at with each sides crowning final epics Riddle Snake Blues and Highway Loop.
It's here that the band express their vision to its fullest degree. Both songs are minor classics, capturing a certain awestruck, stoned wonder to an astonishing degree. 'Get your motor running. Get out on the highway,' as Orr intones on the latter. They cap New Petal Instants' quite astonishing achievement. I can't quite believe how good this record is. It's Arbor Labor Union's masterpiece. At one with both nature and nurture. As good a guitar record as I hope to hear all year.
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