On the excellent Like, Love, Lust the Open Halls of the Soul, Jesse Skyes the Sweet Hereafter blended panoramic country-rock soundscapes with guitarist Phil Wandscher's Jerry Garcia-esque, psychedelia-splashed riffs and Sykes' own mature-beyond-her-years Karen Dalton-meets-Nina Simone tones. However, the long-awaited follow-up album, Marble Son, injects a bit more grit into the equation. During the four-year gap between the two albums, the group spent time consorting with the heavy-psych likes of Black Mountain, which seems to have had an effect on the Sweet Hereafter's sound. On a number of tracks here, the guitars dip into a heavier, fuzzier tone evocative of the harder end of ‘60s psych, or even the early wave of hard rock that emerged at the start of the ‘70s. But don't get the wrong idea -- this isn't exactly wild-eyed, Blue Cheer-type territory we're talking about. Even when Wandscher cranks up to 11 and brings his foot down decisively on the stomp box, it's still within the carefully arranged context of the band's sweeping, stately aesthetic, with Sykes gliding gracefully above it all. And it's really less than half of the album that involves this sort of fuzz-filled fierceness; Marble Son is still dominated by elegant, wistful songs that sound like they were conceived on a mountaintop and set adrift to float in a cloudless sky, dipping down just long enough for listeners to get an earful of the airy delights they offer. And whether the sonic setting is one of doomy distortion or fragile fingerpicking, Sykes remains a truly unique vocalist whose dusky voice is capable of imparting a transcendent, almost spiritual quality to almost any tune it touches. ~ J. Allen, Rovi

1		Hushed by Devotion
2		Marble Son
3		Come to Mary
4		Servant of Your Vision
5		Ceiling's High
6		Be It Me, Or Be It None
7		Pleasuring the Divine
8		Weight of Cancer
9		Birds of Passerine
10		Your Own Kind
11		Wooden Roses

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