Country Risque

***As the Crow Flies from San Francisco queer honky-tonk institution Country Risqué evokes the vast wildernesses and extreme landscapes of the West Coast, drawing inspiration from the resourcefulness and mischief of coastal birds, which nested by the hundreds in the trees outside co-frontman Miles Gordon’s childhood home in Portland, Oregon.

Recorded at the Peach House deep in the Sierra Nevada foothills, As the Crow Flies features a rugged and electrified sound generated by a six-piece band. The album includes covers of deep cuts from the Everly Brothers and Conway Twitty, along with songs of longing for the woody expanses of Oregon, where co-frontmen Daniel Bromfield and Miles Gordon met. Gordon’s songwriting overflows with natural imagery and childhood nostalgia, while Bromfield’s writing drifts into story-songs and period pieces, telling stories of women rebelling against societal expectations with dreamlike language that shifts the country towards the cosmic.

Country Risqué prides itself on the eclectic musical backgrounds of its members, who record everything from psychedelic rock to ambient music to doom metal to crust punk on the side. As the Crow Flies is both the band’s most eclectic and most cohesive release thus far, a major level-up for a band that’s beginning to look like a central player in the Bay Area country-rock scene.