Until They Burn Me, made up of Cody Carlyle and Travis Jordan, step out of the shadows with a mythic and unmistakably real presence. After three decades of making music together, from their early days in The Dry Season to reinventing themselves in 2021 under this new moniker, they arrive as storytellers from some wandering carnival. Their sound blends Americana grit, murder-ballad mystique, garage-rock snarl, dark country dust, punk urgency, and folk tradition, creating something raw, worn-in, and spellbound.
Their latest album, “A Carnival of Reveries,” released on October 31, lives up to its name. It’s a lean, impressive collection of songs that feel like fragments of dreams, half magic, half menace, held together by powerful vocals, restrained yet powerful performances, and production that favors atmosphere over ornament.
The album opens with “Dark & Deep,” a decent track. This track feels like wandering into an unmarked forest at dusk, guided only by a trembling voice and the breath of danger on the wind. Carlyle’s vocals are stripped to the bone, carrying a story of spiritual disorientation and moral reckoning. The line “Well, the forest got me lost. Trees so dark and deep” sets the tone for the entire album. This is a journey into the places we avoid in daylight. Sparse instrumentation leaves plenty of space for the anxiety to breathe; each note is a lantern flickering in the dark. By the time the refrain “Hell is dark and deep” arrives, you, as a listener, are already swallowed whole.
“To The Bone” trades the supernatural dread for human tragedy. The vocals here are weary, tender, and almost compassionate, as the song paints portraits of lives once bright and now dimmed. Instrumentally, it’s a masterclass in restraint. Each element enters like a memory returning uninvited. The mix allows the story to dominate, grounding the emotional weight of lines like “Now the wind is blowing cold. And the sad is taking hold.” This is a song about decline, but also about dignity. The sort of track that keeps playing in your head after listening.
Equal parts sinister lullaby and candy-coated hallucination, “Licorice & Lollipops” is one of the album’s thematically complex pieces. Childhood imagery is twisted into symbols of addiction and desire, creating a surreal emotional tension. Vocally, the verses are delivered with eerie softness, then erupt into pleading urgency with “Just one more kiss. Don’t leave like this.” The instrumentation wraps the song in dreamlike textures and the delicate percussive taps that evoke a broken music box. The refrain about heaven and Jesus adds a layer of dark satire, making the song unsettling, tragic, and oddly compassionate.
Oppressive and ritualistic, “Dig Them Graves” stomps like a laborer with a shovel over his shoulder. The band leans hard into their darker sensibilities and a vocal delivery that drips with grit and exhaustion. Themes of judgment, punishment, and mortality are woven into every line. When the singer proclaims, “For the Father is the judge. And only Jesus saves. But for now, dig them graves,” it feels less like a lyric and more like a commandment. Despite its weight, the mix remains uncluttered, allowing the emotional force to hit without blurring into noise.
Track five serves as a breath, though not a peaceful one. “Night Passage of Painted Dog” is a nocturnal journey, an instrumental that prowls. Atmospheric and cinematic, it feels like traveling through a foreign wilderness guided by moonlight and instinct. Percussive patterns mimic footsteps while guitar lines drift like distant calls in the dark. In the context of the album, this instrumental acts as a crossing, ushering listeners from the corporeal world into something more symbolic, spiritual, and surreal.
Mysterious and reverent, “Revealed To Him in the Wild” explores revelation earned through solitude. Vocally, it is delivered like a confession whispered at the edge of a cliff. Lines like “Whispered amongst the trees. The token, the book is opened,” carry mythic weight, supported by layered atmospherics and organic percussion that evoke the pulse of untouched earth. This is a meditative piece, one that suggests understanding not through doctrine, but through wilderness.
Perhaps the most confrontational track on the album, “White Devil” digs into themes of inherited sin, violence, and moral ambiguity. The vocals balance eerie calm with sudden emotional eruptions, mirroring the protagonist’s internal conflict. The instrumentation here is sparse but razor-sharp. The production intentionally keeps its edges rough, amplifying the visceral impact of lines like “Devoured the flesh and slurped the wine. And I feel fine.” It’s an uncomfortable song, and that is exactly the point.
Claustrophobic, feverish, and psychologically dense, “The Golden Motel Room” plays like a crime scene unfolding in real time. The vocals teeter between confession and breakdown, creating a curious tension. It’s a standout performance in storytelling, turning an ordinary motel room into a sanctuary of obsession and guilt.
The closer is a theatrical crescendo of existential dread and bodily imagery. Inspired by Kafka yet entirely its own beast, “Josef K” merges dream logic with ritualistic violence. Vocally, it is the album’s most dynamic performance for me. The instrumentation shifts beneath it like unstable ground, with eerie pads, jagged percussion, and sudden bursts of color mirroring the lyrical chaos. As the recurring bathroom stall ritual returns, “We carve our names into the skin. Reciting sacred verses, the album concludes with a catharsis and uneasy mix.
Listen to the “A Carnival of Reveries” album on Spotify.
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