The White Buffalo

Year Of The Dark Horse

SNAKEFARM Big-screen ambition let loose on Jake Smith’s eighth album.

The new album from The White Buffalo, aka

Jake Smith, is only a fraction of the overall vision for Year Of The Dark Horse. Unapologetically high-concept, the rest of the story is told through the eyes of four different directors, in an accompanying film of the same name, each taking three songs to symbolise a single season in the life of its wandering protagonist. Happily, though, it can be experienced and loved on its own merit.

And there really is a lot to love here. Like Howe Gelb of Giant Sand, Smith has a deep, warm, dry, sandblasted voice that brings to life the American desert, which is perfectly complemented by the lush instrumentation and layered tales unfurling throughout. Kingdom For A Fool is particularly beautiful – country-tinged, revelling in loneliness, and building into a kind of wild, existential euphoria – while the western shanty She Don’t Know That I Lie could plant its flag between Tom Waits and Nick Cave territory while holding its head high, its deft lyricism more than justifying the cinematic ambitions of the project. Donna, meanwhile, reinvents ELO’s Mr Blue Sky and fills it with broken glass and thorns.

This Dark Horse is a magnificent work of art.