It is very likely that you have never heard of the Vigilantes of Love. They have, to date, released nine studio albums and a live album, and have toured the country almost non-stop for the last eight years. They've released their albums on minor labels, major labels, and independently, and they have been produced by the likes of Peter Buck (R.E.M., Uncle Tupelo), Jim Scott (Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen), and John Keane (10,000 Maniacs, Indigo Girls). But still, odds are that you have never heard of them. The Vigilantes' new album, currently in limited release and soon to be in wide release, may very well change all of that. The album, Audible Sigh, is a creation of staggering depth and beauty, indeed, it is soul searching as high art.

Bill Mallonee is the lead singer and songwriter of VOL, and has remained the one constant in the band throughout. Hailing from Athens, Georgia, Mallonee is a songwriter of world-class caliber, able to weave words and turn phrases that cut quick, and hold fast the attention of the listener. He does with rhyme, metaphor, and melody what Van Gogh did with paint, paintbrush, and canvas; that is, he paints pictures of a woeful fallen world that betray the sorrows they depict by offering striking glimpses of hope. The songs themselves are not light fare - - their lyrics bare no resemblance to the quickly digested gibberish that passes for lyrics in most modern rock these days. They are songs about truth searching and truth finding, and about all of the greyness and turmoil in-between. The kicker with Mallonee is that not only is he able to deliver such subject matter without pretension, it's also catchy as heck. Audible Sigh is VOL's most fully realized work to date in this sense. While always leaning on the jangly, country roots of their Athens home, the band has stepped further into this territory with the new material. Audible Sigh's potent combination of countrified alterna-pop sensibility and stark, personal introspection is a double threat that firmly plants this record among the true classics of this decade.

The record begins with the rollicking barnburner "Goes Without Saying," a gem that embodies the descriptions above. "Failure, she's a newfound friend, you let her sleep on the floor," Mallonee testifies,"and when you rise to check out, well, she follows to the door." He then entreats the listener to "keep a candle in the window, keep a fire in your hearth, keep a prayer on your lips, and keep some hope in your heart" despite this specter of failure. Mallonee delivers these lines with his truly one of a kind voice. A bit of an acquired taste, it is equal parts hopeful pleading, quiet confidence, and strong southern cadence. Hammond B3 swells in the background of the song (here provided by the studio master Phil Madeira), guitars ring jubilantly, and harmonies rise, and off the bat you know you are dealing with an exceptionally well-constructed album.

Audible Sigh was produced by Emmylou Harris guitarist (and tremendous solo talent in his own right), Buddy Miller. Miller, whose production work on Harris' Spyboy was nominated for a Grammy, brought much to the table. He came to the studio accompanied not only by his wife, the singer/songwriter Julie Miller, who provides backing vocals on many tracks, but also with Madeira, Brady Blades (drummer to Harris and Steve Earle), and, of course, the goddess banshee of country music herself, Emmylou Harris. Miller's production on Audible Sigh is nothing short of masterful. It takes a careful and prudent ear to add appropriate instrumentation, arrange harmonies, and generally flesh a song out to its full potential. Miller does all of these here with seeming ease. VOL is capable of producing themselves extremely well (their last album, the gorgeous To the Roof of the Sky, is the best testimony to this fact), but Miller takes them to the next level, coaxing the best vocal and the perfect mix of instrumentation out of Mallonee and band.

Check out the track "Resplendent," a high point among many on the album. The song is a heart-wrenching tale of dustbowl survival in the face of unbelievable desperation. Mallonee turns the story into a haunting meditation on the roots of human struggle. "I remember howling fury, just like a plague of locusts, Egypt's punishment for sins of pride, is that now what has come over us?," he somberly wonders, further questioning in the chorus,"how much of this was meant to be? How much the work of the devil?/ How far can one man's eyes really see in these days of toil and trouble?" Harris echoes Mallonee's chorus in breathy and ethereal harmony, sounding like the ghost of the wife he describes losing in the song's story. Kenny Hutson, VOL guitarist and multi-instrumentalist, perfectly places the slow whine of pedal steel among Mallonee and Harris' vocal trade-off. The finished product is a song of manifestly transcendent beauty.

Hutson, new to the band as of 1998's To the Roof of the Sky, is behind much of VOL's realized potential on Audible Sigh. He is newfound virtuoso, displaying incredible skill not only on guitars, but also on mandolin, pedal steel, and dobro, adding rich texture to all corners of this record. Mallonee has long dealt with a sort of revolving door backing band, often changing members from one album or tour to the next, and never achieving the consistency that allows bands to develop and flourish. This unfortunate tradition seems to have finally ended with the current line-up of Hutson, bassist Jacob Bradley, and drummer Kevin Heuer. The band, and in particular Hutson, have, through both their skills and their willingness to stick around for a while, allowed Mallonee the freedom to flourish, and in general move beyond the confines of his own musical abilities (once VOL's only mark of consistency and uniformity). For proof of this, listen to Hutson's feverish mandolin picking in the folk-rock romp of "She Walks on Roses," it is a gloriously hectic accompaniment to Mallonee's already urgent-sounding love song.

Urgency pervades the entirety of Audible Sigh - - urgent questioning of worldly paradigms, urgent searching for capital "T" Truth in a life of confusion, urgency to exorcise the lazy ghosts that haunt us all, and urgency to return home to bask in its warm glow and be with loved ones. Somehow Mallonee manages to pack all of these into one song, the extraordinarily pretty "Nothing Like a Train." "You can map the lay of the land," Mallonee attests,"you can describe the sad terrain . . . but it all looks the same." Mallonee finds the terrain full of people searching, but none willing to talk about their search. His solace is advised of in the chorus,"nothing like the leaves 'round your front door/ and the stages and the pages, you've been in love before/ and these things you feel inside your bones, those that won't leave you, those that won't leave you alone." Once again, the guitar and organ swell, and you realize that you've stumbled upon some pointed truth in this rock song, of all places. Mallonee is here warning us, once again with well-crafted urgency, to never ignore or take for granted the subtle foundations we build our lives upon - - "the leaves 'round your front door" and truths that you cling to "inside your bones."

If you ever get a chance to catch the Vigilantes live, you will find their intensity translates well to the stage. Their concerts are exuberant and raucous affairs, and Mallonee and company are prone to jump around with wide grins as they share their songs of hope. After it's all over though, you may find yourself strangely frustrated. Not frustrated with any aspect of the performance, mind you, but frustrated that you're just now hearing this great music, and further frustrated with the machinery of a music industry that would allow talent of this magnitude to fall through its cracks.

You might further question how Bill Mallonee can continue in the face of this kind of adversity. Mallonee hints at an answer to this last question on Audible Sigh's closing track, "Your Part of the Story." "We've been digging through notebooks, some empty some full/ and mapping the caverns of our little skulls/ I've been trying to find something you might need/ there may be a little . . .a little goodness in me," Mallonee offers, furthering that "sooner or later, yeah, it comes down to this . . . it's all just gifts that we're living with." Mallonee and his VOL brethren realize their music affects people, and though they know that the crowds are small and the record sales the same, they also know that these "gifts that [they're] living with" must be used not just out of duty, but out of sustenance.

Audible Sigh was originally recorded for the Pioneer Music Group label, but in typical VOL luck, the label folded, putting the record's release in limbo. Fortunately, the band was able to buy the record back from Pioneer, and is currently shopping it among many interested parties, major label and otherwise, to be made available for wide release. By special arrangement with the webzine True Tunes News, VOL has made a limited number of the albums available to buy online now. They took this action mainly to appease their strong core of fans drooling for the opportunity to hear what all the buzz surrounding this record is about. Whether you wait for its imminent release or buy it now online, you are sure to recognize Audible Sigh as the rare thing that it is, a record of honesty and hope.