Evening Machines

Fresh off a tour with the Colorado Symphony, Gregory Alan Isakov goes both big and small on his fourth studio long player, the brooding and beautiful Evening Machines. Recorded at home on his working three-acre farm -- in addition to making music, he sells vegetable seeds and grows his own market crops -- the 12-song set feels derived from moonlight; an insomniac's journal refined into an elegant, leather-bound codex. On par with the best works from indie folk dramatists like Andrew Bird, Josh Ritter, and early Sufjan Stevens, Evening Machines caters to Isakov's folk and pop proclivities with equal measure, delivering austere ballads that evoke Springsteen at his most pensive and confectionary hooks that would make James Mercer lose a tooth -- those earworms, however, are swathed in layers of reverb and administered at half the speed of your average Shins song. The LP's just over 40-minute runtime feels appropriate, and while it doesn't overstay its welcome, there's still enough meat on the bone to satiate. Isakov has crafted a dark gem of a record that filters American folk music through the wide-open vistas of his bucolic homeland while maintaining a level of intimacy that can feel almost uncanny in its intensity. ~ James Christopher Monger