King Ropes - Idaho

King Ropes’ album, Idaho, is soaked in “The Spirit of The West”. Whatever that means. It’s not The West of tourism pamphlets, fly fishing, or cowboys riding into the sunset. Riffing on the idea of Idaho as a kind of misunderstood underdog, the band is more interested in evoking a world both remarkably gorgeous and harshly unforgiving. The band is carving out a sound for itself that reflects modern life in The American West — evoking the bewildering complexity and contradictions, the massive expanses, mythology and realities, mind blowing beauty and heartbreaking hardships. Boom and Bust. The Mountain West. The American West— it’s where we’re from and a huge part of who we are.

So it’s fitting that King Ropes’ music is full of open spaces and jagged edges. Guitars scrape and whine. Amps rumble. Rickety pianos rattle in and out of tune. Like the West, nothing is too refined. At the center of it all is Dave Hollier, a gifted songwriter at the top of his game; with his odd quivering voice, surveying a land that’s a solar system unto itself, an impossible collection of distances and dreams. “We’re from and of and about the West and the Western experience,” says Hollier. “I feel akin to bands like Modest Mouse and Built to Spill, Queens of the Stoneage, not necessarily sonically, but those bands are from weird middle-of-nowhere-in-the-West places and represent that experience in some way. I feel like our songs—even if they’re not really explicitly about living here—are informed by that for sure.”