Drag City
2007
Shelter From The Ash
About This Album
It's clear from the very first moment of "Alone with the Alone," the opening track from Six Organs of Admittance's Shelter from the Ash, that this is a Ben Chasny record. The open-tuned drone -- the layers of acoustic guitar wash creating an enormous backdrop of pure "sound" before the half-sung, half-chanted vocal -- is a signature of sorts. It began happening on 2005's School of the Flower and came to fruition on 2006's Sun Awakens, but on Shelter from the Ash it's there from the jump -- that sense of complete "otherness" that inhabits the best of Chasny's solo music. Loneliness and tension are never answered on this record, only expressed into the void without self-pity. Chasny is a guitarist first and foremost, but he's become a songwriter. These eight songs may not be able to be covered by anybody else, but they are wonderfully constructed, beautifully textured, and exquisitely played. "Alone with the Alone" has that tension in it that threatens to burst at the seams at any moment, especially when the electric guitar solos by Chas and Tim Green cut glass through the mix, screaming into the whirlwind. But they are answered by the sleight of hand that is "Strangled Road.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4 and 8)

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