The Vermont rocker has unleashed his best record yet, full of vital-sounding songs.
★★★★★
Photo: Gabe Long
“These are the days of one thing after another.”
Has any other lyric summed up the hellfire that is 2026 than this one from Greg Freeman’s apocalyptic and prescient new record All Set The Bone?
As ever with Freeman, his words define him best, and this lyric perhaps best encapsulates one half of what he’s trying to communicate with us on his third studio album: the painful brutality of simply trying to survive in such a brutal and unforgiving modern world. The lyric is potentially a callback to The Boy In the Bubble, the classic opening track to Paul Simon’s Graceland, where he recounts that “these are the days of miracle and wonder.”
Heard side by side, Freeman and Simon’s lines rhyme perfectly but represent polar opposite perspectives. Whilst Simon was ushering in a new generation of racial mobility and desegregation, Freeman instead spends much of All Set The Bone lamenting the failure of our progress and the bloody tatters it has left us heaped up on the floor.
This opening track, Cahokia, tells us all that we need to know about Freeman’s thoughts on the world we currently live in. Musically, it crashes into our ears at full force like violent artillery being sprayed in all directions. As Freeman laments that “doomsday came and went”, it’s clear this record isn’t concerned with what went so badly wrong as much as it is trying to make sense of what is left and what we can do about it. It is simply full of hell and fury.
Second track Totalled begins with frantic police sirens and screeching feedbacking guitars before bubbling over into an onslaught of chugging guitars. It’s a pattern that repeats throughout the album and again on Culture, a siren song about the totalitarian destruction of culture, featuring buckets of musical feedback that does its very best to drown out the very song itself.
“No more rock and roll” indeed. As ever with All Set The Bone, those who are patient and immerse themselves in these songs get huge, exhilarating payoffs. As the army of horns bursts into the song towards its climax, it feels like nothing short of absolute triumph. Freeman isn’t afraid to celebrate classic rock and roll sounds all over these songs, with Pavement-esque screeching guitars and Exile On Main Street-era The Rolling Stones boozy horns all over the record.
Lead single Indu is another highlight. It’s one of the most immediate and catchy songs on the record. It is direct, as it shoots straight into your veins before offering a chorus that feels like it ascends into the heavens. It’s also at this point in the record that Freeman starts to delve into the other half of what’s on his mind: love. Not just love for the sake of love, but love as a means to find hope and solace in a world that has seemingly collapsed in on itself.
As we get to fellow single Loser’s Prize, Freeman sings that “Love will make you weak / But only at the knees / When I’m alone I can be anyone / But when I’m with you / I’m me.” It’s a gorgeous verse that, taken alongside the anarchistic anger on other tracks, offers a balance and perspective that really makes All Set The Bone stand out as an essential and vital body of work.
The album continues with more incredibly dense, interesting songs like Decade and Untitled 10 before getting to Next To Nothing towards the album’s climax. It features a Paul McCartney-style jaunty piano juxtaposed against what can only be described as Noel Gallagher blasting his guitar through a nails-on-a-chalkboard pedal. If that sounds unappealing, then perhaps this isn’t the record for you, but to me, it is exhilarating.
Truthfully, each song on this record deserves to be talked about, and they all feel essential and vital to making up the cohesive whole that is All Set The Bone. Not a single note, instrument or lyric feels out of place or undeliberate. As the album’s penultimate track Costs winds down, Freeman leaves us with a stunning lyric that best encapsulates the crashing together of hope and cynicism he spends the entire record navigating: “If the morning comes / Then just rejoice / To have someone / To regret it with.”
All Set The Bone is a long album. It will challenge some listeners. However, if you put your faith in these songs, you will be rewarded. They are full of love and righteous anger in equal measure. They are spontaneous, exciting and made for repeated listens. It feels like a real statement and a love letter to the art of the album format. It feels so exciting and vital to hear a record that isn’t afraid to be as bold, honest and uncompromising as All Set The Bone. Sorry, Christopher Nolan, but I’m afraid Greg Freeman has produced the real odyssey of 2026. Drop the needle on All Set The Bone and let it take you for a ride. I promise you won’t regret it.
All Set The Bone is out now via Transgressive.
