Steep Leans' debut album, "Grips on Heat", featured a syrupy, midnight-in-the-desert sound, that through elements of repetition and drone, created a sort of hypnotic landscape to deliver the weary melodies buried beneath. On "Naukeag", Jeffrey Gray Somers latest effort as Steep Leans, Somers sheds some of the haze and reverb of his previous work for a more angular and lyrically focused sound. The production here is clear, sharp and spaced out, while still maintaining the ambience Steep Leans is known for. While "Grips on Heat" lamented on the ghosts of a time long gone, something impossible to grasp, (hence the title), "Naukeag" is an album about reckoning with where you've ended up and figuring out how to ground yourself within that chaos. It's about accepting whatever things you've done, for better or worse, sifting through any wreckage you've created, and leaving it in your wake. It could be about redemption, but more likely it's about facing reality, and realities enough.
