Review: ISMAY- 'Desert Pavement'

Roots music has always had a connection to the land. From its start, it was the poetry of the rural class, farmers, miners, and fishermen. On Desert Pavement, the second offering from ISMAY, that symbiosis with the land, and especially the animals that live off it, is on display across many of the album's 13 tracks.

Avery Hellman, the primary force behind ISMAY, spent their twenties working as a farmer and that experience informs much of Desert Pavement, though in ways that are often surprising. Take the lead-off track “The Shearer and the Darby Ram.” What starts as the tale of a poor family of shepherds becomes something more as the narrator finds a massive ram who gives so much wool he turns the family's fortunes around. It's not the California desert of Hellman's own experiences you feel here but the Celtic Isles and the mythology that sprung from it.

Another animal, this one normal-sized, makes up half the point-of-view of the album's standout track “Coyote in the Road.” Telling of an encounter between a driver and a coyote, the song is split into two parts, with the first telling the driver's story and the second through the coyote's eyes. Both verses end with “I went still, went on into the night,” though the night each goes into is very different from their perspective.

“The Dove, The Shrew, and The Raccoon” reads like a fairy tale, helped along by Hellman's unique vocals and lyrical phrasing. “The Golden Palomino” tells of a chance encounter with a wild horse that leaves the narrator changed. “The Lonely Stallion” flips the script and portrays the loneliness of loss through the horse's eyes.

But it's not all animals and fairy tales on Desert Pavement. Hellman brings that same razor songwriter's eye to the human condition as well. The album's strongest song, “Streaming Family,” is a commentary on technology's isolating effects. “Wake in the middle of the night / and there's no one in sight,” Hellman sings over simple acoustic guitar and drums. “But there sits in my palm / Turn on, a family to keep me calm.”

“Essay Man” finds a woman losing herself in the comments section of an online essay. “The Window Shade” is a tale of the struggle to leave the comforts of your family home to find new ventures. “Stranger in the Barn” finds a family turning away from their instincts toward tribalism to welcome a stranger squatting in their barn into their lives. “I Called You Up” is a heartbreaker about growing apart from old friends, with the narrator concluding “I'm all grown / and you've got a life / Outside my own.”

Instrumentally, Desert Pavement is helped greatly by the input of producer Andrew Marlin of Watchhouse. Marlin contributes several instruments, vocals, and handclaps that help bolster Hellman's vocals.

The best compliment I can pay to Desert Pavement is that it's interesting. Albums are often well-written or well-sung. Some are even excellent or, less often, transcendent. But it isn't often that the superlative I land on first when describing an album is “interesting.” Nevertheless, that's the best way to describe Desert Pavement. And that's what makes it a strong recommendation from me. Good albums come along fairly often. Interesting albums? That's less common.