Pitchfork

From the first hollowed-out chords and reverbed vocals of Arbouretum's second album, Rites of Uncovering, it's clear that it's going to be a somber, serious record. Bandleader Dave Heumann cites the writings of Paul Bowles, where sheltered Americans violently confront their naiveté in hostile foreign lands, as the album's primary influence, so you know off the bat it's not going to be a barrel of laughs. Throughout the first couple of songs, the jury stays out on whether it's to be just serious or overly serious: "Signposts and Instruments" and "Tonight's a Jewel" display all the stylistic tics that some listeners, myself included, will have to work a little to get past.

Before the quality of the songwriting, you'll notice the presentation: All of the dragging percussion, mincing vocal inflections, peyote-friendly guitar dirges, and portentous lyrics allude to a certain shamanistic fetish. One occasionally pictures Heumann showing up at the recording sessions with a stack of Neil Young records stashed beneath a scratchy poncho: A city slicker attempting to channel the fiery-eyed desert mystic of folklore with wiggy guitar slides, Big Sky psychedelic atmosphere, aloofly metaphysical imagery, and waves of heat-stroke fuzz.

But over the course of the record, the resonance of the melodies gradually overrides the initially distracting phrasing, revealing a sometimes exquisite folk-rock album. Nevertheless, it's worth noting that two of the most striking songs are the ones where Heumann unburdens his voice of rococo intonations, letting it ring high and clear through the music: "Mohammed's Hex and Bounty" profits from the same blend of humble guitar work and hangdog, prairie-broad singing that distinguished Flying Canyon's record last year (although Heumann sings on key), and Heumann exhales elegant concentric circles into the star-rippled surface of "Two Moons".

"Two Moons" is also one of the only songs here that doesn't feature anything resembling a guitar solo, bringing the album to a serene close. As someone who tends to mistrust guitars whenever they get too obviously into being guitary, it's rare for me to be impressed by solos. But the ones on Rites of Uncovering are impressive indeed, to the point where our own Grayson Currin was compelled to spend his entire "Pale Rider Blues" track review diagramming the one it contains.

My problem with guitar solos in general is that they're often like tattoos-- something showy inscribed upon the music's skin. Arbouretum's are sinewy connective tissues so deeply embedded in the music's viscera that they hardly qualify as solos. Time and again, they reinforce, instead of derail, the momentum of their songs.

This group effort, written in conjunction with a full band, improves upon the Heumann-penned debut by disregarding its instrumentals and lo-fi inclinations, emphasizing fluidity and polish. It retains the Long Live the Well-Doer's vast desert ambiance, but renders it in tremblingly lucid tones that are more stylistically appropriate than the debut's gauzy imprecision. If you occasionally get the uneasy sense that you're being led through the desert on a horse with no name, that's ultimately part of the album's allure: its ability to skirt the edges of grandiose cliché, sometimes slipping halfway down the slope, while packing a cowboy-sized wallop into each slow-mo, afterimage-trailing haymaker.