After Alter
finds
Jaye Jayle
's
Evan Patterson
at something of a crossroads -- a place that couldn't be more appropriate for an artist who straddles heavy music and the traditions of blues and folk so seamlessly. The cathartic outpourings of 2023's
Don't Let Your Love Life Get You Down
played like the end of an era in
Patterson
's life and music; that feeling was only heightened when his other band,
Young Widows
, reunited after a lengthy hiatus. Gathering four newly recorded songs and four that
self-released prior to
Love Life
,
turns the tension between past and future into frequently gripping listening.
' influence is unmistakable in the gritty heft of "Father Fiction," which teams gospel-inspired backing vocals with a pummeling attack from former
High on Fire
drummer
Chris Maggio
.
uses the grinding stomp that unites the album's newer songs to wonderfully eerie effect on the paranoia-steeped "Fear Is Here" and "A Blackout," a portrait of a man living on the streets that swings from desolate emptiness to suffocating distortion. It's
's second half, however, that reminds listeners of
's formidable range. "Small Dark Voices," a spacious synth-blues epic, suggests there's plenty of life left in the electronic experiments
pioneered on
Prisyn
. The skeletal twang of "Help!," meanwhile, delivers something rare: a
Beatles
cover with a mood and personality entirely its own. The two versions of "Bloody Me" -- a song
wrote in the project's earliest days -- best capture
's extremes. First appearing as a slow-burning
Black Sabbath
homage, it returns to close the album with a solo rendition so dusty and weathered, it could've been recorded on wax cylinder. It feels like
could go anywhere with their music after releasing this time capsule, but taking stock rarely sounds as imaginative as it does on
. ~ Heather Phares