Ruin Creek, the third solo album by Plow United frontman Brian McGee, is a carefully chiseled masterpiece of punk brevity and shadowy folk minimalism. McGee is not a punk who picked up an acoustic guitar because he was tired of sharing a van with three smelly dudes; he’s a guy who walked away from the punk scene in 1998 at the height of his band’s popularity and spent the next decade deep in the mountains of Western North Carolina, immersing himself in American folk traditions as both a woodworker and a musician.
Ruin Creek feels like the crunch of dead leaves under an old boot. It feels like long shadows cast on quarry walls by a setting winter sun. It feels like life and it feels like death. It feels like Ruin Creek.

Engineered and produced by the Bouncing Souls’ Pete Steinkopf