The stark electrification of the opening banjo lick in Brimstone Rock gives the impression that the followup to Sackcloth n' Ashes would be nothing less than a classic on the same level as that much-celebrated debut. And the willingness to embrace the gothic murk of that album and render it more sharply distinct from the yowling shit-kicker country music that was its other hallmark does grant Low Estate some of the most powerful cuts of 16 Horsepower's career. It's a subtle separation that nonetheless gives those disparate influences a direct, startling power that in many ways wasn’t revealed on their debut. The development of 16 Horsepower in this direction is hardly radical: they're still very much the same band as they were on SnA, with the same ethos, general songwriting framework and set of influences. As such, while Low Estate doesn't really offer much in the way of new ideas, what is offered is, on many of the cuts, a refinement and distillation of their previous work, as seen on the simmering tension of Brimstone Rock, the morose dirge that is the title track, the stomp and howl of Sac of Religion, and the chugging train-to-hell rhythm that permeates Coal Black Horses.
As with their debut however, there is only so much musical variation that backwoods death songs and southern gothic imagery can conjure up, which leaves portions of Low Estate feeling bloated and redundant. Pure Clob Road and Phyllis Ruth in particular add little to the conversation, despite not being bad songs in and of themselves, but when placed with other tracks that explore the same musical ideas better, they leave the finger hovering over the skip button. A rollicking, if pedestrian, cover of The Gun Club’s Fire Spirit is either a serviceable tribute or a bitter disappointment, depending on how much potential you think 16 Horsepower had to breathe new life into the music of their spiritual godfathers. This lack of variation is one of the ready-made pitfalls of any heavily folk-influenced artist; by nature, folk music is defined by structural and sonic limitations and doesn’t easily lend itself to innovation. Later musical projects would see Edwards and company handle this problem by more seamlessly integrating far-flung world folk influences, as well as dipping their feet ever deeper into the dirgey gloom that their John Calvin meets Jeffrey Lee Pierce ethos is so conducive to. But Low Estate is, at least most of the time, willing to rest on the laurels of its predecessor, which when you consider the mostly unimpeachable quality of the songwriting, is excusable.
