If you're familiar with 16 Horsepower, or perhaps stumbled sideways into the band through David Eugene Edwards' Woven Hand, you know what to expect before cracking the cover. This is going to be deeply foreboding folk, darkly spiritual, and definitely intense. It may fit the No Depression format, but that's a funny name for it; this isn't about to leave anyone jolly.
Olden marks 16 Horsepower's tenth anniversary as a recording unit by gathering early material. Studio demos and interviews from 1993 and 1994 accompany a 1994 live set to illustrate the band's journey, finding its voice while spinning tales of locust years, sin, and redemption. Live versions from Denver's Mercury Café of "Pure Clob Road" and "Heel on the Shovel" are markedly different from their Low Estate and Sackcloth 'n' Ashes counterparts. Other previously unreleased material includes the haunting drone of "Train Serenade."
Other coverage for this album
Opus 2003Reviewed by Chris BrownI can very clearly remember the day I first heard 16 Horsepower. I'd just finished college and moved back home, living in my parents' basement and selling CDs at the Canadian equivalent of Best Buy until I could turn up a job in my field. A friend online mentioned this very dark, very intense, almost country band she'd just seen open up for The Innocence Mission. On the strength of her…The Phantom Tollbooth 2003Reviewed by Jeff CebulskiI was an indifferent hearer of 16 Horsepower's material until my own live hearing of Woven Hand, the latest incarnation of David Eugene Edwards and his biblically gothic art. Having "gotten it," it was time for me to revisit 16 Hp, the band that has received cultic acclaim for its ingenious melding of scriptural allusions, rustic sensibilities, and rock rhythms. That's why Olden, the newest 16…The Phantom Tollbooth 2003Reviewed by Jeffrey OverstreetAs an album, 16 Horsepower's latest release Olden could serve a variety of purposes. Perhaps it works best as a collector's item--a heap of alternate versions and live performances of songs they featured on previous releases. It could also serve as a study of how their style changed from their early bare-bones sound of 1992 to an increasingly intense, energetic, voice-crying-in-the-wilderness…Similar sounding releases
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