ROUTES & BRANCHES
featuring the very best of americana, alt.country and roots music
October 12, 2021
Scott Foley, purveyor of dust
TRAiPSiNG THRU the AiSLES: add these to your basket
Sean Rowe - The Darkness Dressed In Colored Lights (Fluff & Gravy, Oct 8) Sometimes the finale of a relationship isn't a soul-shaking explosion or a big bang. Sometimes the end comes in a sigh. Despite the dramatic cover art, Sean Rowe's first LP for the reliably curated Fluff & Gravy label isn't about revenge or resentment. Instead, we're given access to that moment when where did we go wrong is punctuated by alternating moments of lingering desire and tentative hope for what's next.
With his baritone delivery, it's too easy to liken Rowe to Leonard Cohen. Like Cohen, he is a weary heart-on-sleeve romantic, his art steeped in elements of folk, pop and soul. But Rowe is a more versatile and expressive singer, and he surrounds himself with beautiful, cinematic arrangements that lift songs like "To Make It Real" beyond familiar folk environs. He cries, All this darkness / Dressed in colored lights / Everything is wrong / But you look so damn beautiful tonight. Jeremy Boettcher's fretless bass expresses an unexpected amount of emotion, and Courtney Hartman's guitar is a secret weapon throughout Darkness.
Hartman (primarily known for her time with Della Mae) contributes vocals on "I Won't Run", a country number and one of the record's standout tracks. More commonly, Sean Rowe and producer/instrumentalist Troy Pohl invest songs like "What Are We Now" with a less genre-restricted atmosphere, where keys and horns breeze and guitars ring and echo. The song finds Rowe swaying in the wake of a dismantled relationship, disillusioned and uncertain: You go looking for the truth / Where your parents hid the gold / And you found it wasn't there. "Married To the Lord" creates a sensuous, barely-there bed of synths upon which the singer lays his most revelatory vocal.
Sean Rowe is a remarkably strong and expressive singer, and these nontraditional arrangements create a perfect tableau upon which to work. That voice rises to the fore even on more musically complex pieces like the percussive "Honey in the Morning" or the atypically upbeat "Squid Tattoo" with its skronking sax. Defined by Ben Lester's melodic piano lines, "Little Death" spotlights the genuine soul that inhabits Rowe's songs: Work me lord, and wash my sins he implores on a cut that might recall Chicago in their classic early days. Reportedly inspired by the sound and production of Anna Tivel's The Question, Sean Rowe convened some of the same team to create his sixth full-length solo LP. The product of those sessions is just as tasteful and vulnerable, but benefits from his pathos and sardonic humor in creating a satisfyingly original collection.
We've been touting Amanda Anne Platt's songwriting since our first review in 2012, and playing her music with the Honeycutters since their 2009 debut, Irene. Each subsequent release has exceeded expectations, prompting us to periodically declare Platt as among our strongest pure songwriters. As these new tracks are released, that conviction is only strengthened.
Each subsequent monthly release has featured one song each from the devil and the deep blue sea; one more outgoing piece and another more inward-looking and contemplative. For every upbeat "The Devil" (with its baritone twang) there is the reflective "Rabbit" (with its watery pedal steel). Platt and crew are fluent in both settings, the songwriter's lyrics as genuine whether following a reverie after watching a dog kill a rabbit or suggesting a more typical country setting: We were sitting in the backseat / Your Chevy Cavalier / Tom Petty on the stereo / You whispering in my ear.
Like Lori McKenna, Platt is a spot-on lyricist, a great ear for dialog and a novelist's eye for life's small details. Of the woman beneath the late-night streetlight on the bluesy "Burn", she notes: A little heaven gets loose / When her voice cracks. She never reaches for the self-consciously poetic, working instead with a more rough-hewn everyday fabric. There is a simplicity in the strummed acoustic and piercing pedal steel of "This Night", down to the air brakes on the highway / Neighbor's news through the wall.
These singles will eventually be pieces of a concept suite, and time will tell the extent of that ambitious project. For today, it's enough to have this growing collection of singles, honestly some of the best pure americana available for our streaming pleasure. You'll hear it as Platt reaches for the upper ends of her vocal range on the melodic "Great Confession", and in her tribute to a woman's reality in the upbeat "Girls Like You". On the flip side is a plaintive ballad to her daughter, the profound and lovely "Always Knew": I thought I'd read more leatherbound books / Know how to clean and how to cook / And understand the time it took / To rebuild when my world got shook / I thought I'd have more big ideas / On world hunger, war and peace / And I thought I'd have some bigger dreams / Than a good friend to grow old with me. If it were released today, Devil and the Deep Blue Sea would stand confidently among the year's most valued collections.
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It's been long enough since we checked in on A Routes & Branches Guide To Feeding Your Monster that we're starting to see the early holiday records for 2021. Pistol Annies will be dropping Hell of a Holiday via Sony on October 22, and Amanda Shires will add For Christmas for Christmas on November 12 (Silver Knife). For non-tinsel faire, we can look forward to a collaboration between Jason Boland & the Stragglers and Shooter Jennings. The Light Saw Me arrives December 10 courtesy of the Proud Souls label. Chan Marshall has proven to have a terrific way with a cover. 'Neath her Cat Power moniker, she'll be sharing the appropriately-titled Covers on January 14 (Domino). Finally, looking further into 2022, one of my favorite songwriters is preparing his next record. Ryan Culwell's Run Like a Bull has been scheduled for a January 28 release.
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