Forever Goldrush – Halo In My Backpack

Records like this are enough to make you feel that maybe the world isn’t going to hell in a handbasket. After making a regional splash with a self-released album in 1998, relative Sacramento unknowns Forever Goldrush return with a revelation. These boys can write songs, and the whole vibe of Halo In My Backpack makes it seem like it’s 1971 all over again.

Ghosts of icons such as The Band, CCR and Buffalo Springfield hang thick over Halo. Maybe it’s the sixth-sense interplay between the guitars and piano, the band’s staunchly rustic country blues underpinnings, or lifetimes spent listening to Neil Young’s Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, but there’s an unpretentious, organic force at work here that’s refreshing and undeniable. Much of it has to do with singer/writer Damon Wyckoff, whose husky, open-throated vocals (reminiscent of a young Bob Mosley from Moby Grape) draw every ounce of soul out of the songs.

While the album does trail off a bit with some weaker cuts toward the end, its first half is very fine indeed, with the electric buzz of openers “Vicious Ways” and “In My Rebuilding” giving way to the album’s finest song, “Sweet 65”, a driving, mesmerizing rocker — road music of the highest order. “Crazy Anyway” is the centerpiece, the hardest-rocking number on the album. It’s a love song, a statement of purpose that effectively channels the more intense, terminal aspects of Crazy Horse.