Greg Freeman– All Set The Bone

Americana storyteller Greg Freeman has actually returned with his double-LP ‘All Set The Bone’, just a year after the success of 2025’s ‘Burnover’The record is a victory of distorted guitar, bursts of percussion and piano flourishes throughout 13 tracks and 66 minutes.

The album was tape-recorded live and uses this rawness as a badge of honour. ‘Loser’s Prize’, unquestionably among the standout tracks, surfaces with an 80-second flurry, as effective drums, bluesy strokes on the piano and high-pitched guitar scratches match each other as they take fast turns at centre phase. The tightness of the ending is possibly not a surprise when you think about the album was produced by Grammy Award-winning John CongletonIn this sense, the album provides something of a contradiction. The record is raw and unpolished, however this evident looseness is thoroughly adjusted.

Freeman showed CLASH that he “desired it to seem like you might hear the relationship in between the instruments”, and possibly the album stands out most in these minutes. Take ‘Decade’. Simply after Freeman announces “Whatever you’re frightened to lose/ I assure there was absolutely nothing coming anyhow”motivating the tune’s topic to toss care to the wind, so does the critical structure for a quick interlude. The trumpet’s solemn tune plays over the crash of cymbals and the band’s plan before the last verse, its brighter tune requiring a smile to sneak in behind Freeman’s vocals.

Sonically, ‘All Set The Bone’ hardly ever settles into either straight-out spirit or gloom. Alt-rock positivity comes forward through memorable guitar twangs on ‘Indu’, upon which Freeman regrets the passage of time: “These days come so fast, these nights go so fast now”. The topic can be heavy, however Freeman consistently enables brighter musical minutes to pierce the gloom.

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Lyrically, the album spins stories and prepares characters in a design normal of the folk that Freeman draws motivation from. The stories are an appealing mix of both the individual and political, however never ever too on the nose. The individual, sometimes, motivates reflection, such as on the abovementioned ‘Loser’s Prize’: “When I’m alone I can be anybody however when I’m with you I’m me”.

Freeman utilizes these tales to develop practically a parallel universe as he holds up a distorted mirror to contemporary America, with its characters bring the weight of what that involves. On ‘Cahokia’, there’s a “citizen with some charge card financial obligation”, while on ‘Totaled’, a character’s body “turns to ground beef” as they being in the “morgue of mechanical failure”, grieving the death of an enjoyed one. The lyricism is regularly thought-provoking, while likewise prompting marvel through the tales it informs.

If the album’s appeal depends on the friction in between its rougher rock impulses and its more conventional perceptiveness, ‘Untitled 10’ may be its clearest distillation. The distorted guitar riffs present Freeman’s somewhat stretched vocals dealing with sensations of seclusion and hanging on to the past– “everybody who’s pertained to the celebration is now a bug in amber cast”As the tune advances, the pace slows and melancholic violins make a look, stimulating a bluegrass fiddle. The shift records much of what makes the album work: its capability to move in between noises and state of minds without ever feeling totally settled in one location.

‘All Set The Bone’ works since none of these aspects exist in seclusion. The live recording provides the tunes their volatility; the storytelling considers that volatility a human centre; and the album’s motion in between alt-rock, blues and Americana keeps it hard to determine. Taken separately, these elements would be trigger to take pleasure in All Set The Bone. The mix makes an engaging case for All Set The Bone as one of 2026’s finest in class.

9/10

Words: Olly Kay

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