Modern Gardens February 2020

The Battle at Garden's Gate is the kind of album title that accurately reflects the contents within. Greta Van Fleet isn't much concerned with the modern world, preferring to live in a fantasy of their own creation, one cobbled together with ideas learned from old albums from Led Zeppelin, Rush, and Styx. All these elements were in place on their 2018 debut Anthem of the Peaceful Army, but they're amplified on The Battle at Garden's Gate, an album that makes everything that worked the first time bigger and louder, or just more. The group's unexpected success meant they had the power to enlist an A-list producer, so they brought Greg Kurstin – a Grammy winner for his work with Adele and Beck who also helmed records by Paul McCartney and Foo Fighters – into the studio to help shape their fanciful notions and heavy riffs.

V. Williams is a composer representing British late-blooming nationalist music. Synthesizing the influences of his country's folk songs, musical traditions, and Impressionism, he has established a gentle, conservative, yet unique style. These symphonies, which express the anxieties and hopes of modern people, are his signature works, and are characterized by their grandeur, beauty, and familiarity. Slatkin's performance is a masterpiece with a very clear and clean interpretation.