The Old Believers - Eight Golden Greats

Recorded and engineered by Jason Powers at Type Foundry in Portland, OR and Chris Phillips at Cider Mountain Recorders in Athol, ID | Mixed by Nelson Kempf and Jason Powers at Type Foundry | Mastered by Carl Saff at Saff Mastering | Produced by Nelson Kempf

This album is a remarkable document for the world of alternative folk. The songs breathe in their powerful influences and exhale a matchless forte: it’s art that stays in the deck for weeks, possibly months. In the vein of the new Bon Iver release, The Old Believers’ Eight Golden Greats encourages listeners to toss around words like “masterpiece” and “creative force.” One can expect wall-to-wall wailing strings, plucky guitars, banjos, tinkering (mildly experimental) keys and cavernous vocals.

In fact, vocals steal the spotlight – with reverb at its heaviest, a howling Nelson Kempf will make listeners consider Jim James making a cameo, and without question Keeley Boyle has one of the best female voices in folk. Her tone is old-fashioned (best noted on “The Trouble I’ve Met”), as if recorded on warm, cushy vinyl.

With dusty Americana nods to My Morning Jacket and the boy/girl call and response of Belle and Sebastian, this Portland-by-way-of-Alaska duo bridges cascading melody, harmony and gorgeous instrumentation while completely avoiding the campy, simplistic hayrides many groups befall. The release confidently yearns and recalls yesterday, uniting melodic pop, soul, folk, country and bluegrass, while maintaining its grounding.

We talked with The Old Believers’ Nelson Kempf and Keeley Boyle about the songwriting process of Eight Golden Greats.

Q: It’s hard to imagine the complexity, structure and textures on Eight Golden Greats happening overnight – how did the songs develop?

Kempf: We first started recording this record around two years ago at Cider Mountain Recorders in Athol, Idaho after we first left home.

Boyle: We didn’t have enough money to properly finish the project, and as it was our first studio experience, we generally lacked direction. So Eight Golden Greats went into the closet on a couple of hard drives until a few months ago.

Kempf: After gaining some distance from the original recordings, they became very nostalgic for us, but we also became more objective about them. We wanted to organize them and make them presentable, sort of like a photo book for lost childhood photos. We decided there was nothing more tidy than electronic music, so that was the platform for the rearrangement of these songs. And I really enjoyed the collaboration between electronic sequencing and a lot of the classic influences on the record.

Q: How did you approach building the album, from song to song?

Boyle: I’ve always loved albums. I like to get a record and then sit down and listen to it from start to finish. When I go to make a record, I’m always thinking holistically.

Q: How did the instrumental and sprawling choir-like parts like those on “that’s All” come together?

Kempf: We were influenced by a lot of those cheesy male chorus parts that you’d hear in Louis Armstrong or Patsy Cline recordings. We wanted to take a lot of those subtle but lovable details that have become out-of-date and place them within a modern framework.

Q: Not only do your songs have an authentic, vintage feeling, they also feel traditional in structure, with verse/chorus framing. Can you describe your approach to song structure?

Kempf: These songs are all very simple that way. It wasn’t intentional, but I’m glad they all turned out so traditional, structurally. I think it’s fitting for this record. I don’t like to feel limited, but it can be really nice to work within those constraints – it gives you direction.

Q: Switching gears a bit, how does playing these songs live differ from recording them in the studio?

Kempf: Some groups get into the studio to capture what they do live – we don’t. There’s a collaborative feeling to live performance, a spontaneity that everyone in the room is sharing, that’s an amazing thing. Being in the studio is having the time and resources to give each song microscopic attention and create

a very precise presentation. I like to keep them separate.

(Fine Romantic Recordings)

www.oldbelieversmusic.com

-Christopher Petro