As soon as you hear that riff, that staccato delivery, that rumbling, grumbling, gravelly groove, you know where you are – both physically and perhaps spiritually, too. It is a groove that runs through the history of American music, linking urban electric blues with quintessentially southern sonic moves; it lingers in the dark corners of Hill Country and in the shaded valleys of the Appalachians; it is the sound of the undercurrents of the mighty Mississippi churning deep and of endless, heart worn highways stretching out ahead of you. It is also the heart and soul of Halo Rider’s “Don’t Let It Drag You Down.”
If the fiddle is a long-established part of US roots music, I bet you haven’t heard one played like this before, Anne Harris’s virtuoso violin work washing all through Markus James guitar and the two joining in unison to create a sonic tsunami so merged and meshed that you won’t know, or indeed care, where one instrument starts and the other ends.
And when that tsunami breaks over you, a sonic tidal wave that is a pure joy to be washed away by, you will find that you are being pulled and pushed through the history of country, roots, folk and Americana music. A history lesson shouldn’t be this much fun, surely?
Halo Rider are less makers of music, more sonic shamen calling up the primal spirits of American music, their music rituals designed to possess the audience, their instruments wands of wizardry, their songs spells. “Don’t Let It Drag You Down” might sound like merely a song, but don’t be fooled, this is the stuff of magic, in every sense of the meaning.
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