Deep Country

During the CD boom of the ’90s, listeners cherished the format for its light weight and compact size. For artists, the design held a bigger benefit: the space to go long without sacrificing quality. With runtime no longer limited to two sides of a vinyl record, musicians weren’t forced to leave bonus tracks on the cutting room floor or debate stuffing songs onto a cassette tape with grainy audio. Naturally, tracklists expanded. That bloat returned in the mid-2010s during the adoption of streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music. With digital streams now counting toward Billboard chart rankings, artists started unrolling tracklists like carpet runners in long hallways, inflating their odds of scoring a hit.

When sprawling albums morphed from indulgent artistic expression into an industry-approved method to game the system, I found myself distrusting the intent of most hour-plus records. If we’re going to go long, then commit to the length by crafting an intricate world or reveling in the journey itself—tasks far easier said than done. Bruiser and Bicycle got the message for Deep Country. While their sophomore album, 2023’s Holy Red Wagon, stuck its toe over the hour line by a single minute, their third LP saunters in sound and runtime, clocking in at just shy of 75 minutes. The Albany quartet rummage through a bin of acoustic instruments and vocal tricks to indulge in the art of low-key merrymaking until you lose track of time alongside them.

Bandleaders and multi-instrumentalists Keegan Graziane and Nicholas Whittemore, bassist Zahra Houacine, and drummer Joe Taurone downshift from Holy Red Wagon’s hyper-energetic prog-pop into Deep Country’s mellowed-out experimental folk. On first pass, Deep Country appears tame by comparison, teed up by the lone guitar plucking away on its pensive opener, “Dance and Devotion.” But when you greet the album not as a slow walker blocking the sidewalk but a sightseer taking in every detail, the deviations poke out in abundance. It’s the fleeting glockenspiel and whispered lyrics in the waltz “Silence, Silence,” Taurone drumming on what sounds like oversized plastic buckets in the carnivalesque “21st Century Humor,” or the acoustic guitar arpeggio and trembling synths breaking up the spaced-out drum fills on “O’ There’s a Sign.” In prioritizing momentum over big hooks or solos, their eventual appearance feels that much more special.

Even when injected with musical muscle relaxants, Bruiser and Bicycle find a way to reinvent their sound. Deep Country is one part the Beach Boys’ experimental era played at half speed, one part slacker rock trapped in a paint-and-sip class where anything goes, and two parts Elephant 6 Recording Co. jam sessions. “Syd Barrett’s Disaster Picnic” is a blissed-out concoction of the three, as is the dreamlike song that follows, “Slow Motion Beauty.” From quadruple-tracked guitar parts to holding hands belting out harmonies in the studio, Bruiser and Bicycle crafted Deep Country as a meticulous yet free-flowing stream.

Though Graziane and Whittemore split main vocal duties, all four members of the band sing harmonies; their mix-and-match styles establish an anything-goes atmosphere where that lack of formal precision gives the band their trademark gaiety. Collective screams of “woo!” spruce up the title track and jovial bah-bah-bahs fall like confetti in “Part of the Show,” always raw and personable in how they were captured. “Waterfight” epitomizes Bruiser and Bicycle’s playfulness and love of subtle complexities, especially regarding vocal delivery. The band’s longtime Animal Collective admiration is still here—from that childlike yelping to low-budget masks—but they sedate freak-folk just enough for its high-strung elements to turn loose and jammy, like Play-Doh balls that leave no residue.

Depending on how freaky you like your folk, Deep Country’s length is either its biggest downside or its best relief. “Get to the point,” Whittemore repeats ad nauseam in “Million, Million” like a self-aware tease setting expectations. Patience is only necessary if you aren’t already living in the present, and it’s easy to join Bruiser and Bicycle there when they’re whittling guitar melodies over a nimble bassline and getting lost in jazzy cymbal hits on “Sinister Sleep Shuffle.” It might take a moment to align with the pace, but once you do, their winding path offers plenty of mesmerizing lookout points, enhanced by the distance between them.