Country Tropics - Old Saw /// Album Review

/// Old Saws album Country Tropics is a journey through drifting hills, forgotten creeks, and quiet town squares. Old Saws invites you to lose yourself in its ambient tapestry, where folk textures and subtle production tricks transform simple droning strings into a rich, living conversation.

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Dead Creek Drawl – A Farewell in Slow Motion

The opening moments of Dead Creek Drawl don’t feel like a beginning—they feel like an ending. Ethereal guitar flutters in the air, delicate strings hum in the background, and a slow, melodic slide guitar guides the way. There’s no struggle, no resistance—just a weightless

acceptance, a peaceful exit into the unknown.

Despite its folk instrumentation, this track isn’t just about warm porches and rolling fields. It absolutely conjures up the romantic parts of folk imagery—the kind of wistful, weathered beauty you’d expect from the genre. But it also invokes something deeper, something beyond the physical world. The mix is bitey, textured, and full of life, ensuring the song never falls into the trap of feeling hollow, as ambient music sometimes can. There’s grit in the strings, a toughness that keeps the song from floating off entirely.

Melodically, Dead Creek Drawl is both grounding and unpredictable. The slide guitar moves freely, never quite telling you where it’s headed, but you trust it anyway. Strings dip down a half-step and rise again, creating an effortless sense of motion—like drifting on a slow current, unsure where it leads but never feeling lost.

There’s no rhythm to anchor you, no pulse to follow—just a free-floating atmosphere that somehow never loses its sense of direction. And that’s what makes this song so mesmerizing: the sense of movement without a map.

This song isn’t just about a place—it’s about a state of being. The nature of transition, of endings, of beauty in the inevitable. It’s haunting but kind. Sad but never bitter.

A song to get lost in. A song to remember things to. A song that, for eight minutes, lets you hover just outside yourself, watching life move on.

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Mechanical Bull at Our Lady of the Valley - A Quiet Arrival.

If Dead Creek Drawl was the slow drift into the unknown, then Mechanical Bull at Our Lady of the Valley is the moment we touch ground. The fluttering guitars return, but this time with more determination, more movement—like a gust of wind swirling around your ears on a cold day. There’s a sense of propulsion, a feeling of forward motion that contrasts the weightlessness of the first track. But it’s not a reckless charge; the song carries an intentional pace, as if guiding us somewhere, and by the six-minute mark, we arrive. The momentum eases, the energy settles, and church bells begin to chime over a newly introduced, solemn chord progression. The flutters and slides of the guitar remain, but now they feel anchored, part of something steadier.

Sonically, the instrumentation remains familiar—guitars, basses, folk textures—but this time, they feel transformed. The mix is still sharp, still sturdy, but the addition of subtly distorted bells panning between the ears is an inspired choice. They flicker in and out like passing conversations, as if you’ve stepped into the heart of a town square, the ambient buzz of life moving around you. The balance of clarity and grit in the mix ensures that every pluck, every chime, every breath of reverb is felt. The restraint in the use of distortion—limited only to those ghostly bells—adds an unexpected but immersive layer to the atmosphere.

There’s a difference in how the melodies behave this time around. Where the first track’s slide guitar felt untethered, wandering through unknown terrain, here it feels more deliberate. A certain phrase keeps returning, a callback, a marker, like a landmark we keep passing on our way through town. This repetition lends the song a feeling of arrival—like we’ve been traveling and have finally found a place to land.

The track carries a clear rhythmic arc. It begins with more energy, more life, but gradually, subtly, it exhales. By the end of its 13-minute journey, the motion has softened, the once-busy air of the track now calm, as if we’ve found a place to rest.

For all its folk elements, Mechanical Bull at Our Lady of the Valley isn’t just evoking a pastoral landscape—it’s capturing something deeper. It feels like a town alive in sound alone, a place you can hear but never see, built from the echoes of bells, the wind in the trees, the distant voices of strangers. You can almost smell the air, feel the weight of the moment. It’s a song of arrival, but also of observation—of standing still and watching life move past you.

A stunning follow-up to the opener. If the first track left us floating, this one plants our feet on solid ground.

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Dirtbikes of Heaven, Grains of the Field - A conversation suspended in time.

From the first uneven strums to the delicate interplay between fiddle and slide guitar, this track feels like a heartfelt conversation on a front porch—a back-and-forth exchange of familiar stories and gentle musings. The slide guitar, ever the storyteller of our album, leads the way with its slow, drifting melody, while the fiddle responds with rhythmic flourishes and droning phrases that hint at shared memories. There’s an intimacy here, as if the instruments are trading secrets under the open sky on a grey, dry day.

The production is a study in contrasts. For the first three minutes, uneven guitar strums weave a fascinating texture, as if two different takes were whispered simultaneously into each ear. This might have risked sounding disjointed, but instead it enhances the song’s swaying, almost floating nature. Layered strings fill the space, crafting a sound that feels as expansive as an entire orchestra tuning up in unison. The track opens and closes with a mysterious, distant sound—a bouncing, bowed string that sets a tone both foreign and inviting.

Melody and harmony remain clear and constant, anchored by the dialogue between the fiddle and slide guitar. Each instrument takes its turn carrying the melody, then yielding to the other, as if in a well-rehearsed conversation that never loses its focus. It’s a musical dialogue that never rushes, lingering just long enough to reveal subtle nuances with every listen.

Rhythmically, the song carries that same floating quality, yet there’s a definite, steady pulse—a predictability akin to the comfortable ebb and flow of a small talk that never feels forced. Emotionally, the track transports you to a reflective space, where lost thoughts gather and a wise, familiar presence seems to offer quiet counsel. It’s a moment of unexpected surprise before the album’s final song—a layered, ambient experience where every listen reveals a new detail.

A surprising, multi-layered journey that is as relaxing as it is intriguing, Dirtbikes of Heaven, Grains of the Field leaves you with the lingering sense that there’s always more to discover if you listen closely enough.

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Chewing the Bridle - A lingering farewell.

The final track of the album opens like an incantation—a low, constant bass note that feels almost primal, underpinned by a drone fiddle and a slide guitar weaving wavy, elusive patterns. It’s as if the song is summoning all its voices to take part in one final, intricate conversation. Slowly, layer upon layer, more strings join the mix. The instrumentation builds deliberately, like a carousel where each instrument takes a turn in the spotlight—a fleeting moment of recognition before passing the baton to the next.

As the track unfolds, the texture shifts from a soft, contemplative drone into something with a brittle edge. Wind chimes and the subtle sound of guitars tuning add an otherworldly quality, while backwards-played strings and a bowed bass begin to sound less like notes and more like echoes of a distant drill, lending an unexpected grit to the ethereal soundscape. There’s an artful tension in how the soft and the abrasive merge, creating a space that is both ambient and meticulously crafted.

While the song centers on a single, sustained bass note over its nine-minute span, the slide guitar and the strings don’t let it become monotonous. Their wavy, two-note melodies inject a sense of dynamic interplay, ensuring that the track remains evocative and full of nuance. In this sonic tapestry, every instrument seems to follow its own heartbeat, yet somehow they blend into a cohesive, almost hypnotic whole.

Emotionally, Chewing the Bridle is the perfect bookend to the journey of the album. It leaves you suspended in that familiar floating space—a place of quiet contentment paired with a gentle, lingering longing. The textural shift, the transition from softness to edge, feels like a final whisper, a reminder to cherish the state of being that Old Saws has so beautifully crafted.

"A lingering farewell, where contentment meets longing."

Let this final track be your last embrace as you float away, still content, still yearning, carried on the echoes of every note.

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Final Thoughts.

Old Saws’ album is a journey through whispered stories and ambient landscapes. I’ve wandered across rolling hills, breathed in the nostalgic scent of an old creek, and felt the quiet warmth of a town church—all captured in this record. It embodies Brian Enos’ idea that ambient music must be as ignorable as it is interesting, inviting a deep dive into its layers of production where every droning string conceals an untold story. This album is a tapestry of intentional moments and addicting spaces, proving that even the softest echoes carry a universe of meaning.

+ Here is a link to listen to the album on all streaming platforms. You can also listen to this song plus every song we've written about on our Spotify account playlists here.