With First Light’s Freeze, Castanets return with a dark mutant-country sound infused with strands of free-jazz, new wave and a late-seventies Nashville big-radio strut hijacked by post-punk unravelers. The result is a beautiful mix of somber reflection, destination-unknown travelogue, and subversive anti-war boogie. Castanets’ unrelenting creative pioneering delightfully befuddles, as they simultaneously flirt and dismantle “New Americana” venture capitalism.

Freeze confronts the mythology of war and friendship. Morphed from a strictly literal and chronological song-cycle to a more broadly sketched reading, the wraith of narrative structure still lurks in the shadows, creating an eerie tale with shifting perspectives and evading resolution. The story ends up resembling an ancient documentary on relationships (others loved, feared, distrusted yet needed), the close proximity of things painful and pleasurable, and the complications of this as a paradigm for the world.