Between his solo output where he has experimented with bagpipes and PVC construction pipes, the Rhodes piano, orchestral bells and sheet metal gongs – with last year’s standout Two Harmonicas in the Jeweler’s Court a reworking of the insides after he accidentally flipped the reed plate of a diatonic harmonica, leading to the discovery of a hitherto impossible stratification of dense polyphonies, dissonances and drones – other collaborations with the likes of Austin Larkin, Max Eilbacher and Weston Olencki plus his work as one half of Tongue Depressor with the contrabassist Zach Rowden where he primarily engages in the ardours of the pedal steel guitar, Henry Birdsey shows a dissident and sovereign yet steady and thoroughgoing commitment to a reshaping of the borders of country music.
Labouring at the granular level when he is not welding and fabricating for his day job in rural Vermont, at the head of Old Saw he unfurls the blazing heart of Americana through a clanging patchwork of staggered and keening drones. Now on their third album, the band comprises a ragtag collection of musicians which changes from record to record, ostensibly friends of Birdsey’s who are just dropping by to say hello. Most likely some of these names are pseudonyms or portmanteaus, masking the muzzle and mane of Birdsey as he rides roughshod over a blackened tableau.
In fact the six tracks of Dissection Maps are not credited to Birdsey at all, but instead to J.M. Eagle who plays the banjo, pedal steel, bagpipes and resonator guitar, Ryder Tarbox whose tape loops bookend the album, Ann Rowlis who returns from Country Tropics on organ, bells and rattles, Addison Starkweather-Price on the harmonica, Grainger Farnsworth on lap steel and electric bass, and Reana Doram on lyre and hammered dulcimer.
From the wiry strings and walking bass of ‘Sleeps With Dice’, the second track ‘Singing Loom’ sounds like a great Highland bagpipe lament with a melodic glint of the spiritual ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’ and its hidebound yet spectral refrain ‘Coming for to carry me home’, as the piece stretches out through misty fields at daybreak all the way to mottled skies under the aching light of la lune. ‘Dealt In Silver’ foregoes the celestial for the swamp through a lap steel opening and bowing or quaggy drones, suggesting that for every revolution around the sun the day’s labour remains the same, before taking on the characteristics of a Western film where murky deals are afoot and bells toll perhaps to mark some funeral at the chapel, otherwise emanating from inside of the casket in a desperate attempt to ward off an untimely demise.
‘Revival Hearing’ carries a limpid sense of renewed vigour and spiritual uplift through resonator guitar, open strings and bells. ‘Measured Mile End’ is the most shrill track on Dissection Maps, like a long drawn-out siren alarm. And then the chugging ‘Last Rings’ carries us aboard an old locomotive replete with sharp whistles and puffs of steam, a skittering and juddering ride down beaten-up railroad tracks which soon leaves the hardwoods and conifers behind as with a misty last glance through a fogged-up rear window, the train barrels headlong into the blackness of the night.
