It’s been a while since we last heard from ghost-folk curator Greg Jamie. He released the most recent album as Blood Warrior with friend and collaborator Joey Weiss in 2019 and shared his debut solo record the year before that. As part of O’Death, he released 4 albums from 2007-2014, a quartet of spectral musings bound in old-timey country linens. There has always been something supernatural to the work with which he’s been associated, a phantasmal view into pastoral landscapes. And it looks as though he’s not done exploring those haunted hallways and midnight wildernesses.
Jamie will release his sophomore solo album, Across a Violet Pasture, on October 10 via Orindal. The 10-track collection will find him wandering through gothic structures and abandoned fields in search of personal freedom and meaning, all the while skirting the affections of questionable characters and dangerous situations. But there is light here as well, a small glimmer that portends a coming illumination, one that will bring us out of our slumberous routines.
On lead single, “I’d Get Away”, Jamie molds these hypnogogic folk mysteries into a compendium of timeless revelation, filed with burnished and beautiful sounds expelled from long-buried wax cylinders. He sings in a timbre not dissimilar to Neil Young’s restless quiver and infuses this murky weirdness with a sense of determination and a feeling of impending catastrophe. Doomsday might be just around the corner, but at least we’ll have this song to keep us company, and there’s something to be said for facing down the darkness alongside friends.
Listen to the song below.
Across a Violet Pasture is due out October 10 on Orindal. You can pre-order the album here. Follow Greg Jamie on Instagram.
