This is one of my most-played albums of the past 12 months. The name Emma Ruth Rundle was one that had swum around the back corners of my brain for several years, though it never really clicked to me that I should check out her music. There was some sort of association with the post-Neurosis/Isis world of doom-rock on the west coast of the US of A, and a highly-regarded solo career from the past decade - and she'd even toured here before - and there I stood like a dunce with my head in the sand.

ERR was a member of the band Red Sparowes, who tapped into that post-Neurosis scene I just talked about (they even recorded for Neurot Records) and mined that post-metal instrumental malarky the likes of Pelican did at that time (hey, I happen to dig that malarky!). Her solo albums run the gamut from folky singer-songwriter fare to experimental instrumental guitar recordings to the gut-rumbling churn of her collab' w/ New Orleans sludgers, Thou. 

On Dark Horses was an album she released on the Sargent House label in 2018, and along w/ her Marked For Death LP from 2016, it's her most straightforward 'rock' album. I mean, this is mid-tempo guitar-rock, but the music itself is expressive enough, and still detached enough from some sort of generic formulas, and so damn moving w/ its subject matter, that simply calling it modern rock does not do it justice.

ERR sets a gloomy tone throughout, the rhythm section is perfectly locked in w/ the drummer accenting the right moments, and the twin-guitar lineup - ERR on rhythm, Evan Patterson on lead - has me thinking that this album brings to mind the likes of latter-period Swans, Justin Broadrick's Jesu, Mazzy Star and Come (the Boston band, not the UK noise pottymouths).

There are 8 songs; the 4 on the A side I wouldn't change for quids. "Fever Dreams", "Control", "Darkhorse" and "Races" - if you're listening to this on the LP format - which I do, along w/ whatever other format will have me, is an unbeatable run of sonics. Side B track 1, "Dead Set Eyes", is the album's highlight, a song I'll place next to the likes of, I dunno, "Marquee Moon", "This Ain't No Picnic", "Stoneage Cinderella", "Waterloo Sunset" or "Thirsty And Miserable", as a track I could hear anytime, anywhere for the rest of my life. It's highly emotive post-rock sludge that moves its way along a 5-minute timeline to a crashing crescendo. This album knows drama.

I'm convinced and converted.