Painted Saints & Brothers Quetico
Source: morecowbell.net
When I first heard Brothers Quetico, their defining characteristic was a squalling earthiness that mixed roots music with sheer noise. On their second full-length, Folk Art Is the New Regular Art, the band (composed of actual brothers Brennan (vocals, bass), Hunter (vocals, guitar), and Evan Goetzman (guitar), and non-brother Casey Dentinger (drums)) still has that quality, but it’s been refracted and blended into an overarching aesthetic that’s at once both weirder and more melodic.
The album opens with “Hang,” a song that establishes a thrumming insistent rhythm with a pounding four-on-the-floor beat and washed-out but driving guitars for the harmony vocals to ride out over in long arcs. It’s a track that effectively connects up Low’s earlier, sparer work with certain elements of punk and dreampop. Throughout the record, the vocals hover on the edge of breaking apart, occasionally exploding into a throat-rending howl, recalling Brakes’ Eamon Hamilton at his most volatile.
