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November 5, 2024
Scott Foley, purveyor of dust
The untimely death of Jason Molina in 2013 left an artistic void. While names like Will Johnson, Justin Vernon, and the late David Berman have claimed him as an inspiration, nothing scratches the same itches or wanders the same moon haunted landscapes as Molina, Songs:Ohio, or Magnolia Electric Co. Those yearning for artistic equivalents might want to browse the recent catalog of Andrew Bryant. This isn't to say that the Mississippi founder of the Water Liars picked up what Molina left unfinished. Rather, Bryant's recent solo albums work with a similar palette of melancholy, brooding, and haunting.
Last week Bryant dropped Loosa Schoona, a project that arrived without fanfare or advance notice. It follows his April Loose Collars project with Gunshy vocalist Matt Arbogast, and last November's career high-water mark, Prodigal. That collection marked a change in Andrew Bryant's approach, finding him working alongside producer Bruce Watson, and backed by an exceptional band featuring Will Sexton, Rick Steff, Alex Greene, Mark Edgar Stuart, and Will McCarley. Prodigal was also written from a perspective of Bryant's Mississippi home, raising questions of identity, belonging, and place.
Those themes carry into Loosa Schoona, even as Bryant has returned to his practice of making his music alone, writing and producing and playing everything with the exception of Kell Kellum's pedal steel, Alex Greene's keyboards, and strings from Krista and Elen Wroten. The new songs range from heavy to acoustic, from hopeful to haunted. All arrive with a whiff of sawdust and machine oil, as witnessed through the bleary eyes of the working man.
Andrew Bryant adds a rare country cast to "At the Sawmill Again", an acoustic number highlighted by Kellum's pedal steel. The grainy track is a blue collar ode, the narrator contemplating: Ain't there more to life than just carving up trees with a blade. "Let the Green Grass Grow" adds fiddle and piano to Bryant's layered vocal: When you're left behind with heartache / And sawdust on your heels / And your mind can't seem to let things go / That's how you know you're human / You're not just a machine made to cut down what nature made to grow.
Bryant's songs also focus on domestic matters. "Around the Corner" is a blues rocker that betrays a wry sense of humor. The singer slips into a drawled recitation: When you come home from a hard day's work / And need someone to rub your feet / I'll be there ... But if you're coming home and fussing because the dishes are in the sink / And the laundry needs folding / And the grass needs mowing / And we're running out of money in the bank again / And you've just had about enough of me playing this fucking guitar all day / Then I might not be here when you get home. The narrator reassures his wife who has awoken from a nightmare on "Silent Killer", a simple acoustic ballad delivered with a sweet vocal and with tongue a bit in cheek: Time is the silent killer / But love brings us life eternal / Or something like that, Bryant sings. And later: I'll drive you to the big store / I'll cash my check and keep it / We won't buy nothing we need / Cigarettes and beer and coffee.
But Andrew Bryant's music is more often heavy and overcast, layered with thick guitar and weighty drums, such as on "Run Fox Run". "Tributary Dreams" echoes the working class theme, a terrifically noisy cut adding organ and the singer's straining voice: I'm just a constant stranger full of tributary dreams / Stuck in a river that leads nowhere ... I want to fly. Here, Bryant rivals Isbell or Will Johnson, capable of writing about blue collar realities without describing unrealistic heroes or hopeless down-and-outers.
Loosa Schoona's noise continues with a number of songs about hauntings. "Old White Moon" raises a fog of growling guitars and an unsteady organ, Bryant pleading for guidance: Light up the night / Show me what to do. Fingerpicked acoustic guitar and skittering snare play alongside banjo and harmonica on the ominous "Ghost Of Howlin' Wolf". And above an ambience of strings, "Air Mount" questions: Does what lives out in the woods / Only live inside our minds. It's on these louder, more haunted numbers that Bryant seems a likely inheritor of Jason Molina's spirit, laboring amidst twilight's uncertainty, barely staying afloat in a sea of noise.
Our internet research tells us that Loosa Schoona is a vernacular name for Mississippi's Skuna River, one of a handful of geographical coordinates on Andrew Bryant's new album. One expects we'll be able to learn more about the story behind the project as/if the songwriter grants interviews. Where Prodigal succeeded by gathering a complement of masterful players, Bryant's return to true solo work allows him to dig even deeper into his surroundings, unearthing true stories of the people and places that surround him. Applying what he's taken from his work with Bruce Watson et al., Bryant seems even more capable of driving his music to new places.
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