Six Organs Scores With Shelter

Six Organs of Admittance’s latest guitar-based record, Shelter From the Ash, is another masterpiece, applying “polish” to trademark “drones, more atomized sounds (and) acoustic finger-picking,” writes Matthew Wuethrich of Dusted. It’s a triumphant gamble to clean up the band's space-age sounds—which have typically succeeded by virtue of their “unfinished quality”—and the band’s “most cohesive record yet.”

Frontman Ben Chasny drops duly “arcane references” when discussing his music, San Francisco Chronicle’s Derk Richardson says, and the shy guitarist is resistant to being pinned down as a “psych-folker.” But still critics endeavor to describe his mercurial sonics. “The default mood is enchantingly grand starkness," writes Janne Oinonen of Gigwise, "(but) you’re never far from a moment of breathtaking prettiness.” (More Six Organs of Admittance stories.)