Back at the start of 2024, reviewing the debut album from Brown Horse, I wrote this: “Keep in mind too, that this is just their debut album and the inescapable conclusion is that the future of Americana might be a band from Norfolk.”
And here they are with their third. The wide-eyed wonder has gone, replaced by something altogether less playful, darker, deeper, and much more scarred.
That, though, is not a complaint. Not even close.
“Total Dive” is the sound of a band stepping forward into the darkness with a cautious optimism. With songs from all four members – Patrick Turner, Nyle Holihan, Emma Tovell and Rowan Braham – it charts small revelations, painful changes and the sort of details that most bands would miss: the beauty and agony of the mundane, the death rattle of a vending machine, headlights catching the eyes of a road-killed fox, the heather-pink of a winter sky.
Which is to say, this is Americana, yes, but it is Americana refracted through something much more peculiar, much more English, and much more interesting.
“Sorrow Reigns” makes that plain. The sound might have expanded, but the class remains. There is a screeching wail to the guitar that encapsulates all the longing in the line “if you’re good enough”, and already Brown Horse sound like a band who know exactly what they are doing.
“Twisters” underlines one of the things that marks them out. The harmonies, the two voices, the way the song seems to sway rather than simply move, all of it gives them a character that is entirely their own. “Comeback Loading”, meanwhile, opens in eerie, evocative fashion, conjuring up images of wide-open prairies – whether there are any in Suffolk, I am not entirely sure – before it settles into something beautifully widescreen.
There is an innate sadness running through this record. It is there in the sound, and it is there in the poetry of the words. When Brown Horse add a little English folk to the Americana foundations, as they do on “Hares”, they become something genuinely special. These songs wander. They meander. They take their time. They are not short, but then, not everything should be.
“Heart Of The Country” is the sort of thing you could imagine Counting Crows doing, except the guitar sound is different from so many of the Americana bands Brown Horse will inevitably get compared to. There is a raggedness here, a rough-edged grace, and one of MV’s old favourites, The Bohannons, would surely be proud of it.
“Total Dive” itself underlines what a guitar-based record this is, but it never feels like a record built on bluster. Everything serves the song. “Wreck” is an obvious highlight, not least for the organ work, and when the line comes – “what did I tell you about asking how I feel?” – we are right at the centre of the emotional trauma that sits beneath the album.
“Oblivion” is superbly arranged too. The instrumentation is perfect, and there is a conversational feel to the lyrics, as though you have walked in halfway through something private and important. “Heavy” continues the thought that if this were a US band, they would already be stars. There is such class here, so many little touches, and again the organ gives it depth and colour.
Then “Watching Something Burn Up” closes the album in a much darker, more ominous fashion. That darkness is matched by the confusion – maybe even the nihilism – of the lyrics: “I don’t care if people just walk out of my life.” It is a stark ending, and it leaves the record hanging in the air long after it has finished.
“Total Dive” is not a new start. It is not a revolution. It is an evolution. But what links this version of Brown Horse to all the others is simple enough.
They are superb.
RATING 8.5/10
