16 Horsepower / Secret South

Alternative Tentacles

16 Horsepower looms large in the Alternative Tentacles catalog, and over the entire alt-Americana musical landscape. Secret South is a cornerstone to this Denver band’s legacy, their first indie outing after departing A&M, recorded at Hamilton Glory Lodge outside Blue River, Colorado, in 2000. This album has long been out of print in America (originally released on Razor and Tie) and only available on vinyl in a very limited edition in Europe through Glitterhouse. As rural gothic goes, one cannot do much better than David Eugene Edwards and company, with their use of acoustic old-time instruments mixed with the impassioned vocals and fire-and-brimstone lyrics (excepting a cover of Dylan’s “Nobody ’Cept You”). Additional surround-sound mix of the album by producer Bob Ferbrache (Blood Axis, Soul Merchants) for this release is included on the DVD-audio format for both the 180-gram black vinyl LP and the CD. “... the result is a forlorn dustbowl saloon bar where Nick Cave woefully sinks bourbons with The Gun Club only moments after a loved one’s funeral parade.... The objective was to make a fucking brilliant album where the mood is king, the delivery is queen, and studied modern coolness is a jester that’s one misplaced quip away from being the lion’s breakfast. And, of course, they’ve succeeded.” —NME (9/10 rating)  “In just two songs, then, only one of them original, 16 Horsepower has made good on its promise of a “secret South,” and well before Edwards has gotten around to sticking the phrase in a song. The old-time religion from which the music is made—the belief that the devil is ever-present but in the deepest sense ephemeral, that God is hard to find but absolute, and that both are part of the landscape, in the air, in the swamp, running through the woods—encloses the performers, and they seem very old.” —Greil Marcus

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