Audiopile Review: Softening the edges of the doom-drone-folk of his duo Tongue Depressor, New England multi-instrumentalist Henry Birdsey has managed to break through to a wider audience with his Old Saw project, which began with 2021’s sublime Country Tropics. Much like Tongue Depressor, the sound of Old Saw is steeped in the traditional instrumentation of classic Americana, deploying banjos, pedal steel, and organ into a deep droning psychedelic slide, but Birdsey arrives in a warmer and somewhat more approachable place than his duo with Rowden ever did. There’s the looping picked-banjo hypnotism of “Sleeps With Dice”, adorned with droning organ and the rhythmic chiming of bells; “Dealt In Silver” is a dusty drift of lap steel peppered with the drama of hammered dulcimer; and “Measured Mile End” is a swirl of picked strings, guttural guitar drone and the bleating sound of harmonica in the distance. Imagine Joshua Abrams reconstructing the countrified-doom of Earth’s Hex and you’re damn close.

“The band captures the American stretch, the spaces in-between and the hollowness that haunts us along those routes…fades the radio to static to let the nothingness linger among the soul.” (Raven Sings the Blues)

“…evokes an ambience of prayer-like solemnity that celebrates something decidedly terrestrial, what the label describes as “a rusted and granular shadow world where the dive bar meets the divine.” It recalls one of those junkyard shrines built by some sincere eccentric, improbably wonderful forms of weathered stone and scrap metal standing like totems to an unrecognised religion rooted in the earth around us.” (Various Small Flames)