King Ropes’ 6th full length album, Idaho, is soaked in "The Spirit of The West". Whatever that means. It’s not The West of tourism pamphlets, fly fishing, or cowboys riding into the sunset. Riffing on the idea of Idaho as a kind of misunderstood underdog, the band is more interested in evoking a world both remarkably gorgeous and harshly unforgiving.
The band is carving out a sound for itself that reflects modern life in The American West — evoking the bewildering complexity and contradictions, the massive expanses, mythology and realities, mind blowing beauty and heartbreaking hardships. Boom and Bust. The Mountain West. The American West.
So, it’s fitting that King Ropes’ music is full of open spaces and jagged edges. Guitars scrape and whine. Amps rumble. Rickety pianos rattle in and out of tune. Like the West, nothing is too refined. At the center of it all is Dave Hollier, a gifted songwriter at the top of his game; with his odd quivering voice, surveying a land that’s a solar system unto itself, an impossible collection of distances and dreams.
