Alt-country gets a new standard-bearer in Brooklyn’s Oakley Hall, with their latest and best release, I’ll Follow You. While not a radical reinvention of the genre, I’ll Follow You is as strong as anything in the cupboard, as the band employs male-female duet vocals from Patrick Sullivan (formerly of Oneida) and Rachel Cox, electric fiddle, and a guitar tuned to play like a five-string banjo, all in addition to the regular rock line-up. Brooklyn might not be the first place one would expect to find some down-home-fried indie-rock, but Oakley Hall smartly combine folk, country, and western with the borough’s better-known alternative style.
Click here for photos of Oakley Hall at Governors Island in New York, NY on the Fourth of July, 2010 in the QRO Concert Photo Gallery
Click here for photos of Oakley Hall at CMJ 2008 in New York, NY in the QRO Concert Photo Gallery
Interestingly, while I’ll Follow You always remains within the indie-country framework, the record still shows great variety, exploring the style’s wide-open ranges. “Rue The Blues” is a catchy, country-road number with excellent rhythm. “All The Way Down” is some epic western rock, with psychedelic guitars. Cox’s voice is pure melody on the very nice “Angela”. And things get more alt-folk on “Best Of Luck”, with the ‘backwoods meets hipster’ track maybe the best combo on the album.
While the heart of Follow beats true, the record does slip somewhat at the beginning and end. The country anthems “Marine Life” and “No Dreams” have a definite presence, the former slow and sad, the latter explosive and expansive, but neither quite win you over the way later tracks do. The penultimate “Rogue Revelator” is not as interesting as it wants to be, despite multiple overlaid effects, while the ‘fem-folk’ of finisher “Take My Hands, We’re Free” can get annoyingly simplistic.
A lot of one’s appreciation of I’ll Follow You depends on one’s opinion of alt-country: if you like that style, then you’re gonna love this. Oakley Hall establish a strong and significant sound that can’t be denied on this, their fourth full-length. But there’s also a musical skill lain underneath, which can appeal to any listener, even those neither ‘alt’ nor ‘country’.
