This is one of those rare, rare records--an album that forces you to hold your breath from the very first note and which, if it were possible to do so without dying, you'd continue to hold until the very end. There's nothing precious or pretentious about it, just feeling channeled through sparse (yet sumptuous) instrumentation and soaring, floating vocals that melt into the air and then rise out of it like ash from a funeral pyre.

Fitting in somewhere between forlorn country-inspired formalism and murky theatrical/psychedelic doom, the Broken Letters are a duo that knows how to leave a good initial impact. Sing the Burning Alphabet starts with an almost stuttering shuffle before "Thunder Ode" settles into a groove that's part warm message, part invocation. The former quality comes courtesy of singer David Hickox, who has a way of delivering sometimes sternly commanding lyrics with a soft edge, conversational but not only spoken word. In contrast the arrangements that he and bandmate Brad Davis create are often tense and haunted, the kind of powerfully bleak music suggested by groups such as early Angels of Light or 21st century Earth while not specifically sounding like either -- Americana as 'goth,' but not limited by that description, as heard in the slow pounding drums and steady, forlorn twang of "Licht" and "In Blood."

There is an endless parade of bands with country twang or Southern accents (sometimes fake or at least forced) coming out of underground rock music. But here there are no vintage cowboy shirts, no sloppy lap-steel and thankfully, no fucking songs with the word whiskey in them. Broken Letters are, in every respect, the real deal. There's nothing glamorous about it, but their formula is effective and engaging. It's also legitimately refreshing and perfectly executed, right down to the presentation. If Drag The River hadn't already broken up, I would tell them to take notes. Even someone as sick and tired of "alt- country" as I am will have a hard time denying this.

Sometimes it seems that the holiest music isn't being made inside churches. While today's religious music skews disproportionately to the happy-clappy, bands like Broken Letters are making something altogether awful, beautiful, and sacred. Broken Letters' bio emphasizes their roots in Southern Gospel music (and seemingly, fundamentalist Christianity itself) and their musical/spiritual journey into mystery. Their sound is sprawling, anguished, somewhere in the musical neighborhood of Low and My Morning Jacket. There's something both transcendent and ickily incarnational in this music, like the best work of Southern novelists Walker Percy and Flannery O'Connor.