Track by track walkthrough of new The Builders and the Butchers album

Let The Builders and the Butchers love continue. Their sophomore LP Salvation Is a Deep Dark Well comes out June 30 and let me assure you: it is going to make your summer. The Portland group reminds me of The Decemberists with their folk qualities (which is only natural since Chris Funk produced Salvation Is a Deep Dark Well), but these guys are far darker. Sure, Hazards of Love saw Meloy and Co. singing about murdering children and such, but there's something far scarier about The Builders and the Butchers' music. Sometimes it's just downright uncomfortable to listen to, especially when home alone.

The tracks on their upcoming LP touch on subject matters are diverse as the Spanish Civil War to Henry Darger. The group's Ryan Sollee walks us through the record, track-by-track.

Golden and Green
I wrote this song after watching “In the Realms of the Unreal” about Henry Darger who was a reclusive artist from Chicago, who worked his entire life as a janitor and wrote a 15,000 page fully illustrated novel. His life story and the plot of his life’s work I found so captivating that I wanted to write a song about it. The story of the song intertwines his life with the plot of the story, the “Vivian Girls” are the main hero’s and a General named Manley is the villan. This was the most fun song to record on the record and definitely one of the strangest Builders songs so we decided to make it the first track.

Devil Town
A song I brought to the rest of the Builders thinking it was mediocre at best, the song was transformed when Ray and Paul added the drums and suddenly I realized it’s potential. The interplay of the clicks on the bass drum rim, and the mandolin give the song a cool off kilter momentum. It’s probably one of the hardest hitting Builders songs and a common first track of a set list.

Short Way Home
The only song on the record where melodica is featured, Paul is playing it like a harmonica through a lot of the song, which really works with the banjo. The stompy tempo and call and response vocals are more similar to the early builders work. This is one of two songs that we used the 15 person Flash Choir on, when the song breaks down they sing a harmonic, “Ahhhhhhhhhh”.

Barcelona
This is one of several songs I’ve written about the Spanish Civil War, recently I spent some time in Europe and visited Barcelona and attempted capturing the feeling of being there in this song. Harvey and Sebastian (who played a lot of the trumpet that’s on the record) came up with the mandonlin/trumpet flourish on the chorus and Paul along with our friend Victor mimicked the line.



Hands Like Roots
This song was written and recorded for the first record, but never sounded like it fit. For “Salvation” we added pump organ and violin which fills the song out. It’s a tough song to pull of live since to play all the parts we’d need a sixth person.

Down in This Hole
This song is about being locked up in a small town that feels like a prison. I wrote it after a heavy doses of Tom Wait’s, wanted to write a song where the last line of the first half of the verse was the first line in the last half. The piano driving the song is played by Paul, who originally wrote this on melodica, in the studio started working out the part on piano, we all looked at each other and said, “no do that, that is amazing.”

Raise Up
This is the other song on “Salvation” that’s about the Spanish Civil War, this song also blends some apocalyptic imagery. The rim shots on the bass drum and Alex’s bass line drive the song forward with a swing that’s unique to any other Builders song. The mariachi section near the end was pulled off by countering the mandolin melody with a counter melody of 3 trumpets and violin.

Vampire Lake
This is one of the oldest Builders songs, it was recorded 3 years ago, but didn’t go on the first record, “Salvation” needed another simple straight fast rocking song so we included it here. There is a slight lyrical change that probably only the original Builders fans will catch, the original version of the song is on the split LP we did with Loch Lomond.

The Wind Has Come
The Builders only real ballad, when Chris Funk approached me originally to produce the record, he inquired if we had ever written a ballad, at the time I had just written this song and I emailed him a demo of it. At home he scored out a violin, viola, and cello string arrangement and our friends Analisa and Emily Tornfelt, and Amanda Lawrence laid down the parts. Ray has a cool meandering clarinet part and Harvey is strumming Baritone Uke through the whole thing. The booming bass sound was attained by putting one bass drum in front of another and putting a mic behind the second one. There is also French horn, Organ, Bass and Bass Clarinet on this song, definitely the most involved composition on the record.

In the Branches
Chris had the idea to blend “The Wind has Come” and this song using several violin tracks creating an eerie chord. This song is set in the same time and storyline as “The Coal Mine Fall” and “Bringin’ Home the Rain” from the record before. This is the other song on the record where the Flash Choir sings, they start with a prolonged “Ahhhhh” coming after the break near the end, and then echo the “my branches are waiting for you“ chorus at the end.

The World is a Top
In the tradition of the first record, and most likely the next, of ending a record with a gospel song. This was fully recorded in the Masonic Temple in north Portland, which has a pretty incredible natural reverb in the room. For this one Chris Funk called upon his friend Marlon Irving from Lifesavas to gather friends and family who sing in a church in north Portland to sing on this track. Originally Ryan sang the entire song, but for this version Kaysandra Irving sang the middle verse and drove the feeling and spirit of the song home.