Any flannel-clad Bon Iver disciple can pick up an acoustic guitar and throw together a few bleeding-heart tunes dealing with well-worn folk tropes like love, loss and atonement. But only a select few can dig deep enough to transform cliche into palpable, gut-wrenching feeling. Enter Brennan Mackey, brainchild behind Denver-based alt-folk outfit King Cardinal.

On King Cardinal’s debut EP, released January 2014, Mackey operated largely as a solo enterprise, relying on strong storytelling and sparse instrumentation to craft an alt-folk identity clearly following the footsteps of elder statesmen like Bill Callahan and Greg Brown. King Cardinal’s sophomore release, “Once A Giant”, finds Mackey confidently spreading his wings from singer-songwriter into full-fledged band leader, enlisting the services of bassist Kramer Kelling, drummer Scott Roush (both of Denver mainstays Rossonian and The Raven and The Writing Desk), and pedal-steel virtuoso Jamie Mitchell, all while stretching into a sound more reminiscent of The Band or The Flying Burrito Brothers.