Available on black wax

Get ready for one of their best albums yet: The Spark.

NPR says, “For more than a decade, the members of The Builders And The Butchers have specialized in a kind of white-knuckle Americana: Their acoustic folk-rock sound is shot through with nervy, hellfire-and-brimstone intensity. The Portland-born band’s hometown brethren in The Decemberists provide a useful reference point — singer Ryan Sollee has a wide-open bellow and a gift for vivid imagery — but The Builders And The Butchers’ urgent music, as heard in the new single “Casket Lands,” is far more scuffed-up and fatalistic.  On May 19, The Builders And The Butchers will return with The Spark, which carries on in the group’s tradition of tightly wound roots music that never feels tethered to a single era. Via email, Sollee writes that the record came together slowly and deliberately.” – Stephen Thompson, NPR All Songs Considered