(Self released, digital)
I love when a record has a big mood. And if the two overriding themes driving that mood are outer space and the lonesome West? Yippee ki-yay, parental fornicator!
Vermont's oddball alt-country outfit Western Terrestrials deliver the peanut butter and jelly of genre tropes on their newest album,
Back in the Saddle of a Fever Dream. Recording partly in Nashville, Tenn., the Terrestrials shook off natural disasters and a pandemic to deliver a record that feels as consistent as it is stylized.
Opener "Space Cowboy's Got the Blues" ushers the listener right into the album's vibe: loneliness, paranoia and tongue-in-cheek humor. "When that cosmic wind starts whipping around the astral plains / E.T. can't phone home from the range / Like an old coyote howling at the moon," croons bandleader Nick Charyk. Then, "Yeah, this space cowboy's got the blues."