The Dead Tongues

Ryan Gustafson remembers very little about the origins of the ten songs on ‘Unsung Passage’, his profound new reflection on the emotional architecture of love, loneliness, and life at large. He mostly knows that the songs were written during quick spans scattered between various tours of the last two years—as a supporting guitarist for his kindred North Carolina spirits Hiss Golden Messenger and Phil Cook’s Guitarheels, and as the leader of his own long-evolving vehicle for a beautifully fractured vision of folk, country, blues, and cosmic American rock, The Dead Tongues. The familiar sounds of ‘Unsung Passage’, a reflection of Americana bedrock, present a comforting score for some of life’s most uncomfortable situations. But they will pass. “Ain’t it all right?” Gustafson demands at one point. “Ain’t it all like a dream?” After all that living, it surely is.