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The Builders And The Butchers: White-Knuckle Americana

On The Spark, due out May 19, the band's acoustic folk-rock sound is shot through with nervy, hellfire-and-brimstone intensity.
The Builders And The Butchers' fifth album, <em>The Spark</em>, comes out May 19.

For more than a decade, the members of have specialized in a kind of white-knuckle Americana: Their acoustic folk-rock sound is shot through with nervy, hellfire-and-brimstone intensity. The Portland-born band's hometown brethren provide a useful reference point — singer Ryan Sollee has a wide-open bellow and a gift for vivid imagery — but The Builders And The Butchers' urgent music, as heard in the new single "Casket Lands," is far more scuffed-up and fatalistic.

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