• Courtesy
• Eastern Mountain Time, More Buses & Trains

(Self-released, cassette, digital)

From their inception, Burlington country outfit Eastern Mountain Time have featured a rotating cast of collaborators who revolve around singer and songwriter Sean Hood. Since the band's fine 2016 debut, Back Home, its catalog has continuously improved, as has Hood's singing. On the project's latest LP, More Buses & Trains, Hood has grown into the quaver of his instrument, sounding more comfortable than ever.

Hood writes humble, honest tunes that offer a modern take on the Bakersfield sound while still honoring the genre, a combination that is Eastern Mountain Time's true strength. As ever, his style is far more Gram Parsons than Waylon Jennings — sensitive, wry and distinctly psychedelic around the edges. The refinement of that high, lonesome tone makes this album the band's most cohesive project yet.

Don't get me wrong: Seven, released in 2021, was a strong set of polished songs, but it just didn't hang together in the organic way that More Buses & Trains does. Surely that cohesion is thanks to Hood's experience working with the outstanding musicians he's collected over the years. They include longtime collaborator and sonic mad scientist Wren Kitz, whose field recordings interspersed throughout the record add intrigue and depth.

The album's sequencing is superb. The warm refrains of opener "Garden" give way to "Sick Again," a lush and sad full-band ballad. Which brings us to another important set of fingerprints: drummer and coproducer Willoughby Morse, whose chops and taste helped make this project so great. This is a crew with a lot of talent and ideas, but the album's mixes are always spacious, never cluttered.

Even during More Buses & Trains' remarkable middle passage, which features some big arrangements, the songs remain stripped down. The careful guitar work of Jim Osborn shines on more than half of these tracks, moving fluidly from soaring leads into quiet textures. His performance on the title cut is especially nice.

The austere minimalism of the album's three-song closing act is a bold move. After many listens, I'm still not sure if I like it, but I am absolutely positive that it works. "Black Dogs" is a hypnotic memory fragment, and "Down in My Own Way" is extremely Townes Van Zandt, a slow-burning dispatch from a beautiful loser. Both tracks are quiet and sparsely arranged, but album closer "Would" takes things even further, rendering a sweet love song into an almost mournful crawl.

More Buses & Trains is a delightful, worthy contribution to a nostalgic subgenre. More importantly, it serves the two most important functions of classic country: It's great background music for a packed dive bar, and it rewards close listening when you're heartbroken at home.

More Buses & Trains is available at easternmountaintime.bandcamp.com.