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July 24, 2022
Scott Foley, purveyor of dust
So much has been made of Arlo McKinley as a writer of bleak songs. Two years ago, we crowned the Cincinnati songwriter sensitive troubadour of the downtrodden. With songs like "Bag of Pills" and "Suicidal Saturday Night" from Die Midwestern, McKinley wasn't doing much to avoid the rep. But this depressive tendency wasn't what drew John Prine to sign him to the Oh Boy label. Arlo McKinley tapped into a more genuine strain of country and folk, a lineage that has lifted him above the sad bastard pack as an artist of more substantial talents.
One of our favorite albums from 2020, Die Midwestern presented Arlo McKinley as a restless soul, and alongside his earlier Lonesome Sound project managed to stir expectations. Songs spoke to leaving town and hitting the road, to a desperate need for escape both from too-familiar environs and from personal demons. That record's final statement served as both a vision and a promise: Grudges that I fell upon / I've been holding for too long / Tomorrow they will all be gone.
This Mess We're In doesn't find McKinley on top of the world. He's still in the Queen City. He's apparently lost friends and family. And he's reconvened the same outfit with whom he surrounded himself for his Oh Boy debut. Once again in a Memphis studio, producer-instrumentalist Matt Ross-Spang is joined by Will Sexton on guitar, Rick Steff on keys, Dave Smith on bass, and Ken Coomer's percussion. Jessie Munson's fiddle serves as a bright thread that wends throughout the new sessions. McKinley has acknowledged: My last album was me figuring out whether to stay or go from a very confused spot in my life. This one is trying to better myself - as a musician, as a human being, as a friend.
Like that fiddle, this air of hope is woven into and through these songs. "Stealing Dark From the Night Sky" builds on Steff's keys, with bass accents and the uplift of strings. McKinley is still trying to find a way out of this town, but he isn't stopping at despair: All this hurt our hearts are hauling / Hurts a little less each day. As many have discovered, salvation comes less from a change in our surroundings than from a reorientation of our perspective. There's still a goodbye on "I Don't Mind", but the separation is accompanied by self-forgiveness. Where McKinley was once raging, he is now resigned.
You'll hear this newfound acceptance reflected in the new songs, which steer clear from the harder country edge of the first two records, embracing smoother, more deliberate arrangements that the songwriter has attributed in part to a musical diet richer in artists like Nick Drake. There's a romantic vein in "Dancing Days", a warmth that fuels the singer's consideration to give it one more chance: Nothing is forever / And no one leaves / As perfect as they came. The title track is a unexpectedly melodic piano ballad, one of the year's few hopeful pandemic-informed songs: It's proof that the bad days do get better. The cut also features one of Arlo McKinley's most heartfelt vocals.
The heavier moments of This Mess We're In owe less to the grit and trouble of McKinley's earlier work than to a Midwestern rock, even peppered at times with the gospel exuding from the Memphis studio. Performed alongside up-and-comer Logan Halstead, "Back Home" swings along on a tuneful fiddle and Steff's peerless piano. The story of disillusion and doubt is as close to country as we come, in style and in mythos: Road less traveled I'll ride / With this revolver by my side / Sweet speed of cocaine / Friends deep in the dope game. "To Die For" and "Rushintherug" share a larger, organ-drenched rock abandon, with the latter playing off McKinley's still youthful, keening delivery.
Arlo McKinley sings: In this mess we'll rest / And find ourselves a home. This calm-in-the-storm spirit is new to the songwriter, even as he's still In all those places I shouldn't be, even as he remains faithful to the weight of his convictions. Of the record he's written: I was navigating through a pretty dark time, but also there was the realization that it's time to really change. This Mess is the soundtrack to that pivot, to a reorientation that is never as easy as it might sound. The collection closes, perhaps appropriately with the gospel-adjacent "Here's To the Dying", in recognition of McKinley's lost family and friends. What might've previously been written off as depressing is here celebratory, an edifying recognition of our reliance on those around us when It's getting so hard / Without you holding my hand. It's this dedication to truth-telling paired with an economy of language that earned Arlo Mckinley a place on the legendary John Prine's label; never indulgent, genuine to a fault.
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Let's sneak in a peek at stuff that's been added to A Routes & Branches Guide To Feeding Your Monster this week. It's been a long eight years since John Fullbright's plainspoken Songs. News of a follow-up has finally reached us with the promise of The Liar (Blue Dirt, Sep 30). Been even longer since we've heard from Truth & Salvage Co. They've set an October 7 release for Atoms Form (Blackbird). Cory Branan has dropped a date for his next project. Expect When I Go I Ghost via Blue Elan on October 14. News came late this week of M Lockwood Porter's next full-length. Sisyphus Happy (Black Mesa, October 14) is produced by John Moreland. Finally, several months ago the Keeled Scales label provided me with an advance of Twain's next record (spoiler: it's real good). A date of October 21 has finally been announced for Noon.
ROUTES-cast JULY 24, 2022
- M Lockwood Porter, "Kid Who Ran Away" Sisyphus Happy (Black Mesa, Oct 14) D
- John Moreland, "Generational Dust" Birds in the Ceiling (Old Omens, 22)
- Julia Jacklin, "Love Try Not To Let Go" Pre-Pleasure (Polyvinyl, Aug 26)
- Cory Branan, "O Charlene" When I Go I Ghost (Blue Elan, Oct 14)
- Herman Hitson, "Ain't No Other Way" Let the Gods Sing (Big Legal Mess, Sep 23) D
- Julien Baker, "Mental Math" B-Sides EP (Matador, 22)
- Derek Hoke, "Wild and Free" Electric Mountain (Spartan, Sep 9) D
- Wade Bowen, "A Guitar A Singer and A Song (ft. Vince Gill)" Somewhere Between the Secret and the Truth (Bowen, Aug 12) D
- Kelsey Waldon, "Simple As Love" No Regular Dog (Oh Boy, Aug 12)
- Sadies, "Ginger Moon" Colder Streams (Yep Roc, 22)
- Wilco, "Pot Kettle Black (Live at the Pageant)" Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (Deluxe Edition) (Nonesuch, Sep 16)
- Nathan Kalish, "Rich Man's World" Great Big Motel Bed In the Sky (JTM, 22)
- Cass McCombs, "Karaoke" Heartmind (Anti, Aug 19)
- Abby Hamilton, "Afraid of the Dark (live)" single (Hamilton, 22) D
- Joe Pug, "Hymn #101 (ft. Brandon Flowers)" Nation of Heat Revisited (Soundly, 22)
- Twain, "The Priestess" Noon (Keeled Scales, Oct 21) D
- Alela Diane, "When We Believed" single (Soundly, 22) D
- Tallest Man on Earth, "For Sent For Edelweiss" single (Anti, 22) D
- Futurebirds, "Buffet Days (ft. Carl Broemel)" Bloomin' Too (No Coincidence, Sep 9) D
- Brittany Collins, "Two Worlds" Things I Tell My Therapist (Pacific NW, Sep 2) D
- Jeremy Nail, "Crimes of the Heart" Behind the Headlights (Nail, Aug 26) D
- Barney Cortez, "Shit River (ft. Rayland Baxter)" Hullabaloo (La Reserve, Aug 19) D
- David Beck, "Miner's Song" Bloom & Fade (Parade Ground, Sep 30) D
- Truth & Salvage Co, "Charm City" Atoms Form (Blackbird, Oct 7) D
- Dustbowl Revival, "Lying To Myself" Set Me Free EP (AntiFragile, Oct 28) D
- Lindsay Lou, "Still Water" you thought you knew ep (Alright Sweet, 22)
- John Fullbright, "Paranoid Heart" The Liar (Blue Dirt, Sep 30) D
- LA Edwards, "The Crow (ft. Maya de Vitry)" single (Bitchin', 22) D
- Andrew Combs, "Anna Please" Sundays (Combs, Aug 19)
^ Arlo McKinley, "This Mess We're In" This Mess We're In (Oh Boy, 22)
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