Based in New York City, SUSS is an ambient country trio whose new self-titled full-length, their fourth and a 2LP set, is out now through Northern Spy. For their first two albums, SUSS was a quintet. Then, with the departure of William Garrett, they were a quartet for their third LP, and now, after the passing of Gary Leib in 2021, a three piece featuring Jonathan Gregg, Bob Holmes, and Pat Irwin. SUSS collects four EPs: “Night Suite” (the final recording with Leib), “Heat Haze,” “Winter Was Hard,” and “Across the Horizon,” the last making its debut with this release. Across the four sides, clear progressions deepen a sound of striking cohesiveness and precision.
In SUSS, Jonathan Gregg plays the pedal steel and dobro, Bob Holmes the mandolin, baritone guitar, acoustic guitar, harmonica, violin and keyboards, and Pat Irwin the electric guitars, national guitar, eBow, harmonium, keyboards, melodica and loops. Their music is exactly as advertised, and if ambient and country seem an unlikely combination, the SUSS’s approach is warm, organic and compelling rather than an underwhelming exercise in style-stitching.
Earlier this year, Tompkins Square released the latest volume of their Imaginational Anthem series, the set curated by Luke Schneider and titled Chrome Universal – A Survey of Modern Pedal Steel. It featured nine tracks from as many different pedal steel players carrying their shared instrument far beyond long-established norms.
Like the musicians on Chrome Universal, Jonathan Gregg’s pedal steel travels outside the realms of standard twang, while simultaneously fortifying the country side of SUSS’s equation. As reinforced by the titles of the five tracks on side one , all named for locations in New Mexico, California and Arizona, the “Night Suite” EP offers a feel that’s decidedly Southwestern, and further enhanced by the guitars of Holmes and Irwin, though the titular vistas are distinct from the increasingly common strains of desert noir heard on the contemporary scene.
Rather than dark of mood, the music suggests a gradually unfurling mysterious expanse that reflects the ambient nature in SUSS’s scheme. Sure, the atmosphere could turn bleak at any moment, but mostly, the pieces suggest the score to a film where the characters do a lot of nighttime driving, not because they need to get away from something but instead because they don’t have any particular place to go.
It’s more Paris, Texas than Blood Simple, ya’ dig? And it’s a sensibility that intensifies across the record, as my thoughts turned more than once to Ry Cooder, though at other moments it’s like Wim Wenders tapped Robert Fripp to soundtrack Harry Dean Stanton’s walks across Texas. The point here is that the music of SUSS is thoroughly non-trite in it country orientation as I was consistently drawn in, which is a quality shared by the best of ambient music.
The impact of losing Leib is tangible, but more so in the overall scope of the release, as the non-vocal aspect of SUSS heightens a subtlety of feeling. And the music can either be soaked up a side at a time, engaging with the foundational four EPs, or all together, as the whole easily holds up of repeated listens. In short, SUSS has made a masterful record.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
