Big Sky Tribunal
Into The Mountain
Self-Released
Street: 04.17
Big Sky Tribunal = Songs: Ohia + Eluvium + Calico
Big Sky Tribunal, while often sounding like the unique vision of band leader Brian Oakley, is made up of a veritable who’s-who in established and up-and-coming SLC artists. Black Hens’ Jesse Ellis, Seven Feathers Rainwater’s Seth Pulver, as well as Ben Kilbourne, Evan Anderson and Sarah Sundahl, steer Oakley’s barn door creak of a voice and structurally sparse arrangements into fully-fleshed, sprawling compositions with a brooding underpinning of ambient tones and hypnotic guitar drones. All of these elements paint foreboding washes of noise across Oakley’s already haunted delivery, turning an album rich in melancholy into a document of timeless pathos. Quite possibly one of the best, but underexposed, releases this year.