Why doesn't 16 Horsepower have the rabid following of believers that would allow their scarifyingly inventive alt country-rock ink and airtime through the print and radio arms of more corporately commercial Christian media vehicles than, say, HM?
Because, after an EP and two long-players on A&M through to Secret South, the band's singer / songwriter and apparently only Christian member David Eugene Edwards continues to use biblical themes and imagery not so much to encourage, pacify, rally the troops, or soothe as to exorcise and haunt. That is, to exorcise the nature of his old man (in the spiritual sense) and to haunt his audience with the Lord's aroma.
So, yeah, 16 Horsepower use mandolin, hurdy, fiddles (doubling as a more classical string quartet formation here, too), but within a rootsy punk aesthetic familiar to fans of The Gun Club or Ballydowse. Their sense of atmospherics and Edwards' plaintive baritone may even lure those curious as to what The Doors may have sounded like had Jim Morrison been Christian and possessed of an Appalachia fetish.
Secret South sounds more electric in production than previous 16Hp efforts, but no less enchanting. "Praying Arms Lane," with its rolling banjo motif, declares the Second Coming in apocalyptically poetic imprecations. "Splinters" affirms Christ's comfort over foreboding Smokey Mountains-via-the Middle East progressions. In these numbers and elsewhere, Edwards' dramatic delivery and the singularity of his band-mates' musical vision makes for art that attracts the artistically adventurous, making believers proud to count Edwards among their ranks and those yet to believe curious because of 16Hp's poetry and unique stylistic confluence.
Proving they respect their roots, a cover of the standard "Wayfaring Stranger" gets bent into a purgatorial maelstrom of processed vocals and an arrangement that would leave bluegrass pioneers like Bill Monroe flummoxed. A remake of Bob Dylan's "Nobody 'Cept You" reveals the band's rarer, tender side, strangely pretty it is.
Secret South is less for those who want to bang their heads than to have them messed over. But 16 Horsepower's way of going about it is a sonically mutant, godly thing.
Other coverage for this album
The Phantom Tollbooth 2000Reviewed by James StewartComing to Secret South directly from Low Estate's intensity, it may seem that Sixteen Horsepower have taken some sandpaper to their sound, smoothing off some of the edges and polishing up the result. Such an observation wouldn't be entirely misplaced. The band's new material isn't quite as extreme in its heady brew of Appalachian, eastern European and gothic sounds as that to be found on their…The Phantom Tollbooth 2000Reviewed by Steven S. BaldwinTheir third full-length album, Secret South reveals a kinder, gentler 16 Horsepower. With less fire and brimstone and more gentle persuasion, the majority of these songs warm like a Holy Spirit whisper, rather than cause you to sit bolt-straight upright from a bold prophets canyon-filling screams. Although a dash less dangerous, these eleven songs are no less interesting than the body of their…Similar sounding releases
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2000Joseph ArthurCome to Where I'm From
2003Doug BurrThe Sickle & the Sheaves
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2001The FramesFor the Birds
