Sixteen Horsepower: Low Estate

Sixteen Horsepower has constructed its sound from odd, antique instruments (including an 1896 button accordion, a 1930s slide guitar, banjo, hurdy gurdy and fiddle), as well as the pained, yearning warble of David Eugene Edwards, who emotes like a fire-and-brimstone preacher. (Appropriately, Edwards is a preacher's son and the grandson of a Nazarene minister.) Low Estate, the Denver band's sophomore album, is built entirely around conflict, from Edwards' lyrics about God and the devil to the balance the group strikes between old-time picking and contemporary electric squalling. The result, naturally, is both haunting and haunted: On the surface, some may dismiss Low Estate as twangy, bombastic, Southern Gothic kitsch, but the sound is so creepy and fevered and uniquely searing that it's downright cathartic. Like its excellent predecessor, 1996's Sackcloth 'n' Ashes, Low Estate delivers remarkable moments, from the appropriately titled opening track "Brimstone Rock" through rollicking thrillers like "Dead Run." While the album will likely never attract the airplay it deserves—and the instrumentally beautiful "The Denver Grab" is disappointingly marred by a dreary vocal arrangement—Low Estate is surprisingly accessible, but in a way that's unlike just about everything else out there right now.