Beautifully produced debut album which carries the flame of Cosmic American music into the future.
‘Bloodlines/Hope‘ is The Makers Out’s debut album, a beautiful produced record which weaves a rich musical tapestry. The Makers Out is the musical vehicle for Tulsa resident Scott Bell, who sees himself as a project leader, rather than the band’s front person. Bell has 20 years of experience producing and playing with a number of musicians and groups including Sigur Rós; however, this record sees him stepping out of the shadows and into the limelight.
The opening track ‘Holy Water‘ is a testament to Bell’s attention to detail with its sparkling slide guitar, layered backing vocals and subtle brass. ‘Golden Driller‘ has an ethereal feel to it. ‘Hallelujah‘, which is one of the album’s singles, starts with a swirling organ, and is, as Bell says, “an angsty plea spoken in a different voice from the same place of despair that Leonard Cohen left with his own song of the same name”.
‘Lhasa’ is a song about being visited by those who have died. Bell says that “Some days I think this song is about my maternal grandfather. Other days I think it’s about someone who was sticking around in an old house I was in. And still other days I think it’s about its namesake Lhasa”, the American-Canadian singer-songwriter who tragically died of breast cancer in 2010, aged just 37.
‘Bloodlines/Hope‘ is a song of two parts. The first minute comprises a brooding instrumental introduction until Bell commences singing. The song has something of a prog-rock feel to it. ‘Religion‘ is about humans putting their heads in the sand to avoid home truths as Bell sings, ‘Religions fall, religions fell, Children shelled, children shelled, The spirit crawls or the spirit dwells, It never falters, never fails‘.
The album ends with the eight and a half minute long epic ‘Five Hundred Million Pounds Of Memory‘ which, with its understated piano and string section, is a song of reflection across the generations. It’s probably best to end this review with a description of the album by Bell who says that, “It’s about ancestral reverence and integration, land honouring, flower culture, indigenous European and American music, landscapes, death, rebirth, and shocking colourful textures of sound and light. This project is about ceremony and opening portals to other dimensions of the self.”
