The latest offering from Portland’s Rose City Band, Sol Y Sombra, drifts in like a sun-drenched hallucination, warm and weightless. Across ten tracks, its golden haze cuts through winter’s lingering frost, melting minds with its slow, shimmering glow.
Rooted in country rock yet untethered from tradition, it offers a sanctuary—part back-porch reverie, part cosmic embrace—amid the chaos of the modern world.
The opener, “Lights on the Way,” is a headlight slicing through the fog, a highway dream where Ripley Johnson’s guitar soars like a comet over endless dashed lines. The album’s first half drips in sun-drenched Americana, where pedal steel player Barry Walker doesn’t just add shimmer but paints whole galaxies.
Walker’s slow-motion glow on “Evergreen” turns the track into a cosmic waltz, pedal steel bending like moonlight caught in slow gravity. Meanwhile, Johnson’s guitar interjections are less “solos” and more divine interruptions, transmissions speaking a language only the enlightened understand.
Backing him is a collective of sonic alchemists: Walker, Paul Hasenberg, John Jeffery, and Sanae Yamada, who weaves in synthesizers and vocals. The album’s closer, “The Walls,” brings it all to a head as Hasenberg’s organ swells like a final wave, crashing the album into an emotionally euphoric conclusion.
Johnson, a veteran of Wooden Shjips and Moon Duo, has always chased the horizon musically and metaphysically. With Sol Y Sombra, he bends spacetime like a slide guitar note at dusk, weaving country twang and melodies that drift between the earthbound and the ethereal.
“I tried to do things differently,” he admits, “but somehow ended up back where I started.” But maybe that’s the point—because this record isn’t about the destination. It’s about the in-between, the sunspots and shadows, the pull of nostalgia, and the thrill of the unknown.
Ultimately, Sol Y Sombra invites you to get lost, look up, and chase the light even when the road disappears beneath your feet.
Check out Sol Y Sombra by Rose City Band on Bandcamp here.
Leave a Reply