Triumphant trilogy is Americana at its best :

It is a significant achievement of this trilogy that though it is ambitious in its scope and execution it remains an intimate and humble experience. There are no grandiose statements, no bombast, no attention is drawn unduly towards it, no great claims are made for it - is on a human scale and it is intensely humane. Musically you can separate the three discs:the first, ‘Horse Mood,' has previously been released and reviewed on this website and it has the maverick ambition and craft of Sparklehorse. He is joined on the second, ‘God’s Country’ by Pascal Humbert from 16 Horsepower on bass and the Morphine drummer Billy Conway - here the sound is sharper and less personal, as though a prototype has been taken and built by experienced craftsmen. The third still contains Conway but he is joined by musicians from the Boston Table Top collective and the result is more of a return to the folkier sound; there is workshop dust still on these recordings. Put them all together and you get a journey across America, a bit like Sufjan’s 50 states projects condensed into 95 minutes.

‘Horse Mood’ is full of gentle strums, swirls of pedal steel, the songs full of images of nature and despite their electronic style seem like a natural part of the landscape. Things move calmly; organically the songs are somewhere in the deep brush of folk in a clearing where it borders with country music, genres unimportant, they just exist, with gentle instrumentals swaying like a wild meadow full of natural colour and movement - parched vocals and naked banjo join together and pedal steel sounds like a hymn. There is the backwoods genius of Mark Linkous and the grizzled world play of Howe Gelb in these songs: they have that sort or presence, swelling and subsiding as easy as breathing, uncommon noises co-existing happily, details sketched where nothing is too polished. These are celebrations of nature in miniature, a glimpse that reveals insects at play - sunlight rain, horses, cattle, people, a playground where saws sing and birds twitter, where the weather is changeable and dominates the landscape.

‘God’s Country’ starts with much the same theme as ‘Horse Mood’ - the mood is different, there is more rhythm and propulsion, and the guitar too sounds anything but natural as it squawks and bends, but this is more of an elegy than a celebration. There are themes of death and loss, of things coming to an end, the music slapping rather than caressing, more dust bowl than nature's bounty. Surfaces are hard, lines straight - we’re moving towards urban spaces, the music more mechanical, electrical, the Arcade Fire’s country cousins coming to town, banjo dueling with electric guitar, backing vocals removing the solitary from the equation. This is more of a collective effort; harder, sparser and prone to catching fire.

The main difference found on ‘Father & Son’ is how it feels much warmer than its immediate predecessor - the guitars are softer and less brutal, the drums less precise, and here it seems a more social record, more generous in tone. You can sing-along at times; it is the sound that has reconciled the two previous themes and sounds. He also moves from major themes around nature to songs that are more personal in nature and that address that other universal theme, love. Here again it is handled with loving care - there is a spiritual and musical warmth that flows through the songs. Things do turn towards the second half where death becomes a central motif, the music loses the warmth and replaces it with a more funereal sound, and Springsteen’s ‘Nebraska’ is ingested and becomes part of the narrative like a snake swallowing a mouse. As we reach the end we return to the beginning to another version of the opening song from ‘Horse Mood’ and so we come full circle, which is an entirely fitting ending to this song cycle.

This is an excellent and important work and one that neatly sums up all that is good about Americana.

David Cowling / Americana.uk / june 2006

There are needless album chronicles. As such, as soon as one hears Bruno Green's voice, one understands that whatever may be written about him will have little importance. One listens, and listens, and one sees an immense desert tread only by traceless passing time. Is it Country? Is it Folk? Maybe both. It doesn't matter in any case. Without even needing to understand the lyrics, one feels the nostalgia and the pride of past times. Of a culture, which most likely only exists through improbable cowboys who made it alive to the 21st century. This backpacker, member of the Santa Cruz gang, has even invited the soft touch of Laetitia Sheriff who is well named for this opus. Bruno Green offers us a soft and quiet album. Intimate and nostalgic, it will keep spinning in our deserts.  

Sina / Oblik / 2005

Bruno Green's music places itself somewhere between Vic Chestnutt, Sufjan Stevens and South San Gabriel. One can also find echoes of Sparklehorse in the rusty banjos, pedal-steel and alienating sound effects.   Green writes compositions that are full of space and that are well in tune with his whispery voice. Horse Mood creates atmosphere and expresses the precarity of the cultural expressions, which have been drowned in the noisy debris of modern times. In the course of eleven short songs, Green manages to depict a rustic atmosphere of decayed barns, of rusted tools and abandoned lands. With Horse Mood, Bruno Green had realized a beautiful folk-blues album that lines with the best with albums two and three. Green is currently in the United-States in order to work on his next opus with two ex members of 16 Horsepower and Morphine...

Wiebren Rijkeboer / Altcountry.nl / 2005

For the last fifteen years, Bruno Green has multiplied projects at will. On temporary leave from Santa Cruz, from which we wait the second recording, he works solo on a triptych, of which the ambition is to appropriate itself the spirit of country-folk that defines Western America so well. The first volume wonderfully sketches out this familiar background, recently magnified by Calexico, while still imposing a personal vision of critical and generous Americana. The sober and refined musicality is pure ravishment.

Alain Birmann / Longueur d'Ondes / 2004

Bruno Green is a star for those who know him, so evident are the beauty of his voice and the value of his musical universe. Starting his activities in 1990, he has recorded several refined but unknown albums, left the label that had signed him in without ending his artistic quest. If he feels any bitterness, he does not show it and says he's proud of "pursuing his little craftsman's activity": he has reasons to be proud, for his albums are superb, and whether they are self-productions or little productions does nothing to reduce their value. An example of comforting behavior for all bands.

HM / Rock & Folk / 2004

Bruno Green records his fourth solo album during a break from the Santa Cruz collective. The ideal occasion for those unfamiliar with this unique singer-guitarist, to savor his moving 'blues'. For this album, which translates a fascination for the American West mythology and only constitutes the first part of a trilogy, he has surrounded himself with artists who are as brilliant as he is -among whom Olivier Mellano- and dives back into his first country-folk love.

HM / Rock & Folk / 2003

"Horse Mood" is part of these little classics that unfortunately fall into a somewhat general indifference. But maybe the activist that is Bruno Green doesn't care, he who fights for a different distribution of music, outside of the traditional vessels and in which gratuity would have its place. Bruno Green is also one of the leading heads of the scuff-proof Santa Cruz, who put up sumptuous unreleased pieces on their website with an insolent regularity. Therefore, let us hope that Bruno Green's music circulates from mouth to ear and gains mythical renown. Here he signs his own album, helped by some his Santa Cruz companions. They still dream of American deserts, lonely hotels, endless merchandise train lines, wild horse rides and compose the original soundtrack to these dreams through a folk halfway between tradition and new scene. The use of the pedal-steel evokes Neil Young's resuscitated "On The Beach" when the measure of eth compositions and their digressions suggest rather Giant Sand, Sparklehorse or Black Heart Procession. But why evoke such heavy heritage when Bruno Green's songs are self-sufficient? His pieces evoke with marvel the in-between, the sweet lethargy, this feeling of nostalgia mixed with a desire for exploration. "Horse Mood" is an album that is constantly on the go, but prone immobility. The departure and immobility are the two driving forces of the albums through songs such as "Riding to my death", "Down sunside", "Lean and bitter" or "Golden Dust". In this way, "Horse Mood" could be the musical extension to Vincent Gallo's "The Brown Bunny". The voyage is not an initiation, it is only a return to starting point. When Bruno Green decides to take off, it is on the back of a dead horse. When the pedal-steel draws grand landscapes, Bruno Green's depressed singing brings us back down to earth. Beauty and desolation are one.
It's common, but the way that Bruno Green sings it forces admiration.

Pop News / 2003

If Riding to my death , the opening title to this album, cuts through with a vocal performance that one would swear to have been borrowed from a well aged Bob Dylan it remains evident that Bruno Green is a lonely rider while remaining close from the Santa Cruz ranch. Can we even speak of a solo album since we find his companions Yves-André Lefeuvre and Pierre-Vital Gérard. Those aren't the only guest wince we also find the charming Laetitia Shériff and her guitarist Olivier Mellano (previously caught playing with Miossec and Dominique A, but also in the Mobiil project). This joyous groups plays to their heart's content when to come to stepping on the territory of a music of great spaces, which paradoxically, is best expressed through an intimate instrumentation. If it isn't for a pedal-steel or a key-board here or there, it is mostly the ensemble that marks by its concision and its cohesion: indeed, one finds rather experimental guitars in On a rope , but it doesn't mean they are in the foreground. Rather the compositions impose themselves overtime or cut to the chase, it is rare to hear a chorus that is repeated more than twice. With Bruno Green, the word pop has not yet been integrated in the dictionary. But does one need to know such a word when one has already digested his perfect song-writer's manual. Filled with melodies and modest but efficient intentions, this Horse Mood, first album from an announced trilogy, will be far from rubbing you the wrong way. In order to convince yourself, you simply need to play the tragic Lean & bitter , of which Laetitia Sheriff's dry arpeggio and marvelous vocals might very well echo in your head way after the end of the song.  

Eric / i-n-f-r-a.net / 2003