Oakley Hall:
I'll Follow You

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Named for the still-living, Pynchon-revered Western novelist Oakley Hall, this Brooklyn sextet thoroughly modernizes twang on its fourth album, I’ll Follow You. There are plenty of Americana cues—the harmonies of Pat Sullivan and Rachel Cox (“Best of Luck”), mournful steel guitar (“I’ll Follow You”), lyrics about “walking in the wild wind” (“Free Radicals Lament”)—but they almost always feed like tributaries into grander designs. “Free Radicals” for example, accelerates into a vaguely atonal Television-like breakdown that forms the song’s center, before flipping a fiddle break and a boozy alt.country reprise about being “two steps backwards and three steps blind.” On “No Dreams,” the elements collide into a propulsive Technicolor pinwheel of harmony and distortion, while “First Frost” floats and creaks. Though Oakley Hall’s songs aren’t catchy enough to be instantly familiar, I’ll Follow You possesses a sound rich enough to warrant listening until they are.