A Closer Listen
Long time readers may recall Appleton Cabin, which we reviewed over a decade ago. For those who need a prompt, the album chronicled a year at the Appleton Creamery, a goat farm in Maine, with the requisite sounds of water and goats. The album was imbued with a sense of peace gained from honest work and a connection with nature.
Life events – age, loss, time – began to intrude on this reverie. The modern world began to impinge. Like many current artists, Dalriver began to wonder what it was all for: the endless hours spent composing, field recording and playing, when A.I. was able to create a reasonable facsimile in seconds. Wind Hammer is the artist’s statement of faith that art for art’s sake has its own intrinsic value, and that the very act of creation is good for the soul. A snowy Maine winter became the blank slate upon which he would compose Wind Hammer, the title inspired by his home town of Windham. Where some folks might find the isolation maddening, Dalriver (Glenn Dalrymple) rediscovered the peace that had once been his, in those halcyon, goat-accompanied days, and transposed his journey into sound.
The tracks are long and languid, at an average length of ten minutes. Time passes slowly up north, during the long, white winters of drift and plow. One cannot be in a hurry to get anywhere, for one cannot get anywhere fast, or at least without disruption. The layers must be donned, the vehicles cleared, the roads – if plowed – navigated with care. In “Granite Ridge,” two and a half minutes of gauzy ambience unfold before the Appalachian guitar enters, then recedes, leaving a soft contrail of wordless vocals. This may not be the actual sound of Maine, but it conveys the feeling. At first there is a solo troubadour warming his woolen socks by the fire, and then, with any luck, friends arrive with food and drink. In the final third, the music echoes and warps, pleasantly buzzed.
“Hold Me” is a light surprise as the initial impression is made by bubbling electronics, which lay the groundwork for a flowing, tranquil piece. And then there is a curiosity, “Appalachians Part 3,” in that “Appalachians Pt. 2” appears on Dalriver’s self-titled 2009 debut. Where, we wonder, is Part 1? The second and third parts are distinctly different. In “Pt. 2,” the opening acoustic guitar is soon surrounded by instrumental companions, demonstrating bloom; in “Part 3,” a deliberately wintry ambience visits the mix (Dalriver is admittedly an Enya fan), demonstrating drift. One might view these pieces as the distance of a decade; an earlier 2025 EP, ALAS, contains a track titled “You Got Old.” In the new piece, the acoustics enter in the second half, the build still exists, albeit subdued, the highs and the lows sloughed, imitating the manner in which age softens the wilder emotional swings of youth.
The center of “All End All Life” falls into near-silence, like the little apocalypse of a snow-covered street; but fortunately the album does not end there. One suspects that this segment reflects the dark night of the soul, a frozen heart in winter. The twelve-and-a-half-minute title track is instead the closer, wrapping the album and town in a canopy of calm, restoring all things, from beauty to hope, refreshing the spirit, nourishing the soul. As a pulse develops, “Hold Me” makes more sense and can be seen as a pleasant foreshadowing, a prophecy of peace. Everything is now made new. (Richard Allen)
Fri Jan 09 00:01:45 GMT 2026