Great Western Valkyrie

This is the sound of mythology being dragged into rock and roll with both hands. The title track from their 2014 album announces itself with a cinematic scope that most bands could never sustain, yet Rival Sons make it feel earned rather than overreaching. The guitars build from a stalking, almost ceremonial opening into something vast and wind-swept, full of harmonic overtones that suggest open plains and long distances. There is a psychedelic looseness beneath the hard rock frame, a willingness to let sounds bloom and decay at their own pace. Buchanan treats the song as an invocation — his delivery has the quality of a man addressing something larger than himself, voice rising through the arrangement in long, sustained arcs that press against the ceiling of the song's atmosphere. The lyrical imagery fuses American frontier mythology with something older and stranger, proto-feminine power mythologized through landscape. It rewards the kind of listening you do with your eyes closed, headphones on, letting the geography of the sound occupy the full dimension of your attention. It's a road song and a war song and something in between that has no clean category.