CCMusic.com

Jaye Jayle's earliest recordings consisted of four 7 singles packaged in the bare-bones dust jackets of early country 45s and etched with the stark Americana-noir of Louisville-based singer/guitarist Evan Patterson. The material was a significant departure from Pattersons primary musical endeavor at the time the percussive Sturm und Drang power trio Young Widows but it fell in line with his ongoing creative arc of embracing of negative space, acknowledging that less is more, realizing that a whisper can speak louder than a yell.

On their new album No Trails and Other Unholy Paths, Jaye Jayle's transportive desolation and hallucinatory sonic mantras are fully documented in all their glory. Along with his cohorts, Patterson weaves a tapestry of neo-folks economy, krautrocks experiments in repetition, skid rows darkest blues, Midwestern indie rocks nihilism, and early Tangerine Dreams analog oscillations. The album seethes with tension and anticipation, with a heightened push-and-pull on tracks like Marry Us and the second song titled No Trail when songwriter Emma Ruth Rundle adds call-and-response vocals to the mix.

The album has a lyrical theme in motion and direction, searching and questioning, and discovery, Patterson explains. A certainty in placement and uncertainty in destination. Primal consideration for surroundings, which may be or may not have been the surroundings sought after. The grayness of life's paths. The where-have-I-been, where-am-I-now, and where-will-I-be. It's a wanderers approach that yielded an unlikely romance and expatriate dreams between Patterson and Rundle during a European tour together in support of their split 12 The Time Between Us. It's the same method taken to the studio, where the band worked with film composer Dean Hurley David Lynchs music supervisor of the last twelve years to serve as producer. The result is an album that retains a certain austerity but pushes it's aural dimensions to their thresholds.

1. No Trail: Path One

2. No Trail: Path Two

3. Ode to Betsy

4. Accepting

5. As Soon As Night

6. Cemetery Rain

7. Marry Us

8. Low Again Street