Federale has spent the better part of 15 years carving out a pleasant niche in the music scene of Portland and beyond. It’s a fantasy world where spaghetti Westerns play nonstop in a dusty drive-in theater and Lee Hazlewooad is still holding court in an LA recording studio. In other words: The gently psychedelic country ensemble led by Brian Jonestown Massacre member Collin Hegna has boxed itself in to an aesthetic that can’t be escaped without taking some calculated risks.
What Federale does, it does very well. The group’s fifth studio album No Justice bears that out with 10 songs that hew to a formula of ’60s film music and the tanked spirit of outlaw country. They get every last detail right: rubbery basslines and well-placed percussion accoutrements; spectral melodies provided by pedal steel, whistling, or the wordless vocals of Maria Karlin; a backdrop of strings played by members of the Oregon Symphony. It’s lustrous and rich and exactly what you’d expect.