Old Style Conjure

Cicadas chirp in the heat of the south, a bell alarms frantically in the distance, warning of the approaching train. After a short breeze of the rushing express, heat, silence and the cicadas take over again, until an irresistible lick of a dobro musically takes the heat to the extreme. These first notes show everyone who doesn’t yet know the blues man: He can do it! And, the man and his band can rock and have the blues.

Cicadas chirp in the heat of the south, a bell alarms frantically in the distance, warning of the approaching train. After a short breeze of the rushing express, heat, silence and the cicadas take over again, until an irresistible lick of a dobro musically takes the heat to the extreme. These first notes show everyone who doesn’t yet know the blues man: He can do it! And, the man and his band can rock and have the blues.

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.