The music genre often called American primitive guitar has been having a bonanza of late, with veterans like Steve Gunn, Nathan Salsburg, and William Tyler and players like Hayden Pedigo, Gwenifer Raymond, and Yasmin Williams taking the sounds pioneered by John Fahey, Robbie Basho, and Peter Walker in increasingly personal and, at times, even visionary directions. Joseph Allred – also known for his associations with rock bands Hellbender, Buddhist Pill, and Across Tundras – has been plying this trade for nearly a decade and a half, seemingly happy to pick his guitar in the shadows and scatter music around like candy for people to find. His profile has risen higher of late, however (search for James Broscheid’s 2025 interview in these very pages), which moves his album releases from chance discoveries to actual events.
The Old Gods finds Allred shifting from the expansive instrumentation of last year’s Old Time Fantasias back to solo recording. Unlike a lot of players, however, Allred doesn’t simply sit down in front of a mic, let rip, and call it a day – there’s a lot of craft and insight in his explorations. Atmospheric and frosted with reverb, the title track floats on a river of Middle Eastern tonalities and mutated classical fingerwork, as of Allred was dreaming of black coffee, strong acid, and the existence of a higher power. Listen to the lush, undulating “Lonely Mount Keya,” with its swirl of twelve-string guitars that blend widescreen strumming with sharp picking, like a hawk slicing its way through a thunderstorm. From the title, you’d think the vibe of “Murmurations” would be creepy contemplation, and you’d be half-right. Though outwardly navel-gazing, the percussive sound of the banjo – steel strings across a drum head, basically – pushes the notes out in the world, knapsacks on their backs and hazy dreams in their eyes. “Cumberland Yab-Yum” reverts to strictly solo performance, with all ten fingers fretting, strumming, plucking, and picking as if Allred is desperately keeping the hungry ghosts away with every note he hits.
Though his music can come across as ethereal in parts, on the whole Allred’s songs feel solid and earthbound. Soaring somewhere between the sky above and the mud below, The Old Gods turns intense inner contemplation into expansively soulful folk music for the world.
