Brown Horse’s first two albums, 2024’s Reservoir and 2025’s All the Right Weaknesses, established the band’s presence in the world of country rock. With their latest set, Total Dive, they further hone and occasionally perfect their MO. The mixes are more lushly arranged. Patrick Turner’s vocals are consistently nuanced. Enchanting melodies emerge throughout the sequence. Total Dive exudes remarkable presence and allure, as Brown Horse find a charged balance between derivation and originality.
Which is what all artists who work with traditional templates – from The Carter Family to Bob Dylan to Emmylou Harris to Charley Crockett – strive for: incorporating and transcending the past. Absorbing yet reconfiguring your influences. Being in a genre but not of it (to recast a popular saying). This is the tension that essentially defines the creative process, particularly with a re-interpretive genre such as Americana, each artist approaching reconciliation in their own way.
