“Led by the quavering vocals of Matthew Milia, this Orion, MI quintet creates white-hot folk music tailor-made to burn a hole through sunken porches...Milia's dank and smart turns of phrase grasp for a past that's not quite there. The sun bleeds onto the horizon and Milia's skeletons dance. 8/10”
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Under the Radar
“Besides the lyrical impact of his visual storytelling, there's a certain degree of pain...in the song "Rosemont," he makes the remarkable exclamation "this road is made of flesh," brutal yet a brilliant metaphor for the travels memory takes.”
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Blurt
“...this debut establishes the group as already one of the very best sounds to come out of Michigan this entire decade.”
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Detroit Metro Times
“Dip your toes in the water and test the temperature, "Orion Town 2" and the stunningly beautiful "Rosemont" should coax you to take a swim.”
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I Guess I'm Floating
“...one of the greatest folk bands the Midwest has ever seen.”
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All Things That Rock
“From there, the album moves seamlessly from one song to then next like chapters in a gripping novel that make it difficult to tear yourself away.”
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Hear Ya
“Though it has often fallen into the shadows of bigger, flashier acts, Frontier Ruckus has made a name for itself with "The Orion Songbook"...glowing displays of acoustic prowess, focusing on the beauty in simplicity...as a whole, the album that suggests the warmth of coming home.”
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Massachusetts Daily Collegian
“If you can picture Jeff Mangum having his friends over and hanging out playing on the porch at a farmhouse, you'd be getting in the right direction...The songs are instantly memorable, the lyrics are swirlingly dense with rich language...it's absolutely fantastic.”
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Yer Bird
“...simple folk melodies support flurries of words, avalanches of images rife with perplexing similes and metaphors, long chains of internal rhymes, and a worldview that might be terrifying if it weren't presented in such a matter-of-fact manner...”
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Crawdaddy
“This is old-timey without the cloying nostalgia or self-consciousness that derails so many attempts to turn back the clock to allegedly purer times; by looking the present straight in the eye, Milia's created something timeless.”
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Inland Empire Weekly
“While the album is tightly packed with similarly brilliant lyrical nuggets, the band never sacrifices any nuance in the musical department...The Orion Songbook is more than an impressive first full-length album, it's one of the better folk albums of the year.”
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Captain Obvious
“...it seems the year's best alt-country record is from a nascent band that calls suburban Detroit home...Matthew Milia has achieved a rare sort of sound that simultaneously evokes myriad influences while coalescing into a unique whole.”
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Hear/Say
“This is the best band you haven't heard and Milia is the most impressive wordsmith I've listened to in a really long time. I'm not sure If I can recall a voice as untreated and honest as Milia's...ever. His is a voice whose timbre carries as much meaning as the words that come through it.”
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Real Detroit Weekly
