Old Saw: The Wringing Cloth

As muscle memory and mental metabolism are set to negotiate with the fast-paced environment of a modern-day world, it makes this time of year somewhat peculiar. In the case of new music, while this year has seen some fine early releases (led by Winged Wheel and Pullman), generally it’s a time of year for many music writers to look back and take stock.

Months, too – most notably, the releases missed in a previous year, and perhaps the finest of them in 2025 was Old Saw’s The Wringing Cloth.

Coupled these quieter periods of the year, from a personal standpoint, I’ve been visiting family in Australia. Not straying too far from the place I grew up, it’s an environment with few distractions and vast landscapes, making it very easy for the mind to wander.

It’s a place that, at times, makes you feel adrift from the world at large (including music), but over the past few weeks, The Wringing Cloth has been one of the few releases that has deeply resonated. A backdrop of modest, droning post-country that has dovetailed exquisitely with immediate surroundings.

Through the scraggily tall grass, this decade has seen the Ripton, Vermont collective – led by Henry Birdsey and accompanied by Ira Dorset (fiddle, bowed strings), Ann Rowlis (reed organ, harmonium), J.M. Eagle (pedal steel, lap steel, resonator), Jim Cutler (telecaster), Addison Starkweather-Price (bass), Peter Catchpole (metal objects, power hammer) and Harper Reed (nylon string guitar, banjo) move gracefully through the ether, and their fourth release may just be their defining moment.

Beginning with the artwork; the kind that makes you fall in love with the music before you’ve even heard a note. But when you do, it’s Old Saw at their creative peak, conjuring up a sound bath of tone, texture, twang and drone. From opening gambit, Song for Paloma, it’s opened-sourced folk music that is like a mediation that vaporises time.

The Horizon Divides You: Exploring Ambient Country

The musicianship is seamless, as Old Saw strike the perfect balance between euphoria and heartbreak. Cutler and Reed’s spidery acoustic interplay on the blue grass-inspired Tilt of the Lamp is delivered with new, poignant force, while Dorset’s emotive strings and Eagle’s pedal steel inflections on Lacustrina find Old Saw guiding their listeners through new portals.

It’s here where the collective revel in the old world. Long Distance Engraving and Aproxmare, droning folk that calls to mind the rustic landscapes where grit and blue-collar industry once thrived. All boom and no bust, and while aesthetically Redaction Hiss and Pearlash offer something similar, there’s a deeper catharsis overshadowed by tonality. It’s Old Saw taking the ideas of Earth’s The Bees Made Honey in the Lion’s Skull and shaping them around their own sepia-toned sound collages.

Elsewhere, and Old Saw unveil their darkest passages. The tumbleweed post-country of Blood Sumac, playing out like a sibling track to Ribbons of Marble, as the collective move through the tall grass like a wild animal hunting its quarry. It’s here where an elusive dark thread emerges, as Old Saw stich together what is the album’s highlight piece.

Mock Silver runs it a close second, as the collective pull ambient post-country to the new corners, while closing cut, Salt Tar, possesses the same dark undercurrents as Ribbons of Marble where Old Saw find themselves sunken in an emotional weight crafted for a film score. It’s an energy that suggests new possibilities for their future.

Which is a place where Old Saw will thrive, but not before acknowledging the past in ways that few others have. Providing a beautiful escapism, perhaps it’s the release that got away in 2025. Or did it? Music writers are often guilty of boxing things into each year like some perverse paradigm instead of treating art as a borderless endeavour, and in the case of Old Saw, that’s exactly what their compositions portray. The stillness of the vast lands where time has no currency, and on The Wringing Cloth, it’s a sparkling, panoramic view of Old Saw’s world. One that is open to everyone.

The Wringing Cloth is out now via Lobby Art Editions. Purchase from Bandcamp.