Murder in the Air

It hasn’t taken long for the Builders and the Butchers to
become one of Portland’s biggest—and best—bands, but
milestones still lie ahead. Their long-awaited second album,
Salvation Is a Deep Dark Well, has finally come out on Gigantic
Music, and the band is about to embark on their first headlining
tour.

It’s quite a leap forward from the Builders’ first appearances at
the end of 2005, which were little more than busking gigs: They’d play
un-amplified outside of a venue during someone else’s show. “The idea
with the band when we started was to play funeral marches,” explains
lead singer and songwriter Ryan Sollee. “We wanted to write about death
and dark things—and play on the street.”

The Builders and the Butchers’ open-coffin stomp ‘n’ twang was a
natural progression after Sollee moved to Portland from Alaska in 2003.
“It sucks to say you outgrew punk rock, but you just start listening to
other stuff,” he says, “and I was just reaching that age. At the same
time I started playing with a friend who’s really into pre-1960s
American music, and I loved it, and started writing songs in that same
vein. We try to be as much of a rock band as we can, but—just
playing those instruments….”

Those instruments are primarily acoustic ones—Sollee’s guitar,
Harvey Tumbleson’s mandolin, Alex Ellis’ acoustic bass—but it’s
the dual drum setup that makes the Builders utterly unique. Ray Rude
and newcomer Brandon Hafer sit side by side, locked into tandem
patterns over toms and a booming bass drum. Rude developed the style
with founding member Paul Seely, who departed the band earlier this
year. “Basically, Paul just decided that he did not want to be on the
road as much,” says Sollee. “We’re very, very sad to see him go. But
Paul’s gonna play on a bunch of songs at the release show just ’cause
he wrote all those parts.”

Salvation Is a Deep Dark Well was actually recorded back in
April 2008. It took a while to find the right label to release it, an
extended process that frustrated the band but eventually worked out for
the best. “The natural progression just got, like, slowed down by about
six or eight months,” says Sollee. “It’s weird to have such a long
reflection period. But it’s still exciting to have it be coming out and
just to see if people will like it or not. Our first album was very
live, and this album was a lot more piece by piece.”

Chris Funk (of the Decemberists and Blue Giant) approached the band
last year to ask if he could produce its next album. “I was, like, you
know, of course!” laughs Sollee. Funk’s methodical approach of
calculated experimentation—not to mention his breathtaking string
arrangements—gives Salvation a full range of sound that
breaks open the Builders’ early template. The album opens with the
haunting “Golden and Green,” a thunderous chain-gang dirge that becomes
a hailstorm of rapid strumming. Meanwhile, “Barcelona” incorporates
mariachi horns, while “The Wind Has Come” is the Builders’ first
ballad, a sorrowful, string-laden meditation on nature, lost love, and
(what else?) death.

“That [song] was one of the nicest surprises about the whole thing,”
says Sollee. “The last thing I’d like to happen is be pegged as a hokey
bluegrass and blues band, where that’s all they do.”