In 2003, Rocky Votolato released his third full-length album. Its title was Suicide Medicine; its music, stark and driven; its lyrics, often brutal in their honesty. It was a document, a slice of one life, touring more than might be healthy, pushing oneself to extremes, conscious that this life might bring more harm than rewards, but continuing onward regardless. It's been two and a half years since then, and that doesn't seem wrong; Suicide Medicine wasn't the kind of album where a quick-and-easy follow-up was the logical next step.

Two-and-a-half years later, and now, Makers. Produced by Votolato and Crystal Skulls drummer Casey Foubert, and despite the sparse list of guest musicians, the sound is nonetheless fuller, warmer, than on Votolato's past work. If Suicide Medicine was Votolato tightening and honing his sound, Makers is the sound of him learning to open back up; there's a great sense of release here, release amidst isolated moments of clarity. For the album's opener, "White Daisy Passes," Foubert's bandmate Christian Wargo joins in on harmony vocals, and the effect is both soothing and open, expanding Votolato's man-with-guitar sound into something more evocative of summertime California pop.

And then you zero in on the lyrics at the center of the song: "I'm going down to sleep at the bottom of the ocean/Because I couldn't let go." And yet, this is a song whose opening lines speak of "a secret magic past world" - and that's the point, we're told: Stare too long into the past and you're lost. The closing lines of "Makers," the album's final song - "Heaven or heavenless/We're all headed for the same sweet darkness" - are a brutal contrast to the pastoral slide guitar that accompanies them. That would be the point.

Nostalgia, desperation, fleeting moments of beauty- they’re all themes that reoccur throughout Makers. Votolato's roots in folk and country drive most of the music; a creeping organ and strings lend an ominous weight to "She Was Only In It for the Rain," while harmonized vocals contrast with the intricately played guitar part of "Uppers Aren't Necessary." "Tennessee Train Tracks" veers into proper rock territory (and feels slightly off-balance because of it), while "Tinfoil Hats" has an off-tempo rhythm that can only be called jaunty, backed by a clattering beat.

It's the album's second song, "Portland is Leaving," where Votolato's use of contrast and contradiction are most sharply understood. It's a traditional-sounding song; guitar, drums, and harmonica supply the music, and the beat is steady, stately. "Sounds too simple," he sings. "Love is the only answer". Later, he revises it: "When love's a train wreck/You're a mistake." There's no clear answer here; there's a rolling emotional feel here, an uncertainty, a divide between kitchen-sink realism and necessary idealism. And that's the heart of the album: being able to take in life honestly, openly, clear-eyed, but clinging tightly to ideals, to hope, all the same. To say, "As though your life depended on it," might be cliché, but in this case, it's the truth. Makers is Votolato's finest work to date. – Tobias Carroll (2005, The Daily Copper)