Greg Freeman’s latest release, All Set the Bone, marks a significant shift in scale for the Maryland singer-songwriter. Released under the Transgressive label, the double album arrives a year after his breakout project, Burnover, and trades the tighter storytelling of its predecessor for a more expansive, albeit occasionally diffuse, approach.
At its most effective moments, the record operates like a high-pressure vessel. Freeman’s vocal delivery often feels strained to the breaking point, matching the kinetic energy of the instrumentation. While he is frequently associated with the recent indie rock revival, the tracks on this two-disc set offer little comfort. Songs such as Marooned utilize frantic guitar and drum hits to evoke a sense of queasy instability, while the opener, Cahokia, merges the tropes of classic American road music with prog-inflected chaos.
Lyrically, Freeman continues to explore themes of isolation and uncertainty. On the track Culture, he poses the questioning lines, “Who do you look to when you’re all on your own? / When all your heroes lost their microphones?” This aligns with the search-like quality of the album, which he composed while traveling across the United States and processing substantial personal changes.
Freeman first gained attention with Burnover, an album noted for its witty, delirious, and devastating narratives. His distinctive sound emerged from combining literary lyricism with loud, riff-heavy arrangements suited for mainstream rock audiences. All Set the Bone attempts to replicate this formula on a grander level, though the songwriting here is more imagistic and less immediately gripping than the taut story-songs of his previous work.
While the new album may not provide the same instant satisfaction as Burnover and contains fewer explosive highlights, Freeman retains considerable creative spark. The result is an impressive but demanding record that showcases his growing artistic ambitions.
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