SUSS - Birds & Beasts [CD]

Pioneering ambient country trio, SUSS “perform with an effortless sense of synchronicity,” according to Stereogum. This quality is as vividly on display as ever throughout their latest full-length, Birds & Beasts. SUSS’s recordings have garnered much praise for effecting a sense of long drives through desert landscapes, a context famously ripe for such synchronicities: slow motion pedal steel guitar, dobro and near-subconscious synthesizer rumbles and sweeps seem to operate via the same logic as that which dictates the interactions of a road-weary mind and a cloud of migrating birds. While SUSS’s previous records have dealt in these kinds of scenes, Birds & Beasts –– though instrumentally more spare –– deepens the sense of meaning and meaning projected.