Thunderheads storming across the prairie, outraged students taking to
the streets, migratory herds stampeding along the tundra--any number of
images could describe the grandiose scope of Red Sparowes lush
vignettes. Wielding both a masters sense of nuance and an outsider
artists unhindered expressionist zeal, the Los Angeles quintet created
a catalog of haunting and hallucinatory guitar orchestrations over the
course of the millenniums opening decade. With two albums, a string of
split releases, multiple U.S. and European tours, and a number of
line-up changes under their belt, Red Sparowes are currently poised to
release their third album and most impressive creation to date, The
Fear is Excruciating, But Therein Lies the Answer.

Its tempting to describe the collaborative efforts of guitarists Andy
Arahood, Bryant Clifford Meyer, Emma Ruth Rundle, bassist/pedal steel
player Greg Burns and drummer David Clifford as soundtrack music. The
absence of lyrical vocals and full reliance on instrumentation conjures
comparisons to symphonic cinema pieces. Yet no composition in the Red
Sparowes cannon feels subservient to a visual companion piece. Their
music never comes across as a disembodied accompaniment, a partial
representation of a larger composition. Every song is its own complete
microcosm, a completely realized and contained moment of beauty.

Though Red Sparowes music thrives unbound by narrative, the band
provides a roadmap to their muse. Their 2005 debut album, At The
Soundless Dawn, cast the scientific inevitability of the Sixth
Extinction into a grand funeral oration, revealing the message within
the individual track titles. Their second full-length, Every Red Heart
Shines Toward the Red Sun (2006) likewise provided a synopsis of the
Great Sparrow campaign of the Great Leap Forward, laying bare its
conceptual role. And, the jabbing assertions of the titles to the
Aphorisms EP (2008 digital, 2009 12" vinyl) served a thematic precursor
to the next album.

Red Sparowes' latest offering, The Fear is Excruciating, But Therein
Lies the Answer, began with the larger existential pondering of truth,
faith, order, causality, and the innate demand for an understanding of
the larger world around us. While Red Sparowes majesty is hardly in
need of story, the provision of the larger metaphor yields a heightened
depth and gravity to their work.

There has never been as pronounced of a leap in style and scope as with
Red Sparowes' third full length. The Fear is Excruciating, But Therein
Lies the Answer maintains their layered arrangements and swirling
amplified crescendos, Americana noir soundscapes (punctuated by the
extended pedal steel on In Every Mind), and gloriously triumphant
melodies (Giving Birth to Imagined Saviors). Earlier records focused
on the larger scope of the album, but the new album is song-centered,
with the individual tracks harboring stronger independent identities.
And where previous endeavors found the band propelled by enormous walls
of sound, they now temper their monolithic progressions with distinct
passages of separated and soft-spoken instrumentation. Red Sparowes
were suspiciously absent from the playing field over the last three
years, and now its apparent that they were busy drafting the grandest
statement and finest achievement of their existence.

(с) sire@hush.ai