These are songs of the destitute and the dispossessed, the lost, and the lonely, of people seeking redemption and retribution. They are beautiful little short 'sonic films', with full casts of characters, with back stories, and a possible future, who come alive in the songs.
In the hands of a lesser scribe, these could be drab, maudlin depressing tales. Fortunately, the characters and stories are written by Willy Vlautin, one of the finest writers, currently putting pen to paper in song or novel form, and delivered in the wonderfully, sympathetically, and heartfelt voice of Amy Boone. Never has despondency sounded so eloquent, ….or soulful.
The album begins with a real rarity in the Delines oeuvre. A love song! Albeit, a Willy Vlautin Love story!
Apparently after a gig in Dublin, Amy Boone said to Willy:
“Listen man, you have to write me a straight-up love song where no one dies and nothing goes wrong or I’m going to lose my mind”.
Hence we have ‘Mr. Luck and Ms. Doom’.
Two social misfits, find some respite from life’s struggles, in each other’s arms, where “She never falls off the world, because it’s him she’s holding on to”, where “They wear out the mattress in every room”.
The album plays out like a mini film festival, with a number of beautifully executed short stories given a cinematic treatment.
Difficult to listen to songs like ‘Left Hook like Frazier’, and be completely moved by the protagonist’s dilemma, caught in a brutal relationship with an addict, with no seeming escape:
He kissed her up and down all night and he was funny
When the needle wasn’t in his arm
I know it’s hard to be to be kind to yourself when you’ve been put down all along
You think you deserve it
That’s why it feels right, when you’re certain that it’s wrong
The evident heartbreak is echoed in the ‘soundtrack’, with Cory Gray’s wonderfully sympathetic horns, almost offering us a shoulder for the listener to cry on. It is hugely affecting. Tales of domestic abuse are a common thread throughout, and again, Willy’s gift of giving voice to the abused women is remarkable.
In ‘The haunting Thoughts’, a woman contemplates the madness and mortal decay around her, and wonders how long before she is caught up in the human sluice drain that is everywhere:
Every time I see something on the street, like some drugged out woman who ain’t even twenty
Or some guy passed out, OD’d, I know it ain’t me, and I keep walking
Amy Boone’s burnished, bruised delivers such lines with such emotion.
It’s an album full of such hard-hitting tales of the lost and damaged, but the real kicker among this wondrous album, is ‘Nancy and the Pensacola Pimp’.
A young woman being abused by her pimp, plays the long game, compiling ‘dirt’ on her 6 foot 5, 110-pound pimp, before extracting her own vengeance, and way out. How many songs, do you actually feel like cheering, when the creep gets ‘his throat slit’?
It’s an emotional rollercoaster, as the listener roots for the women in so many desperate situations.
I will be amazed if there is a more affecting album this this year, again reflecting Willy’s amazing gift for understanding the thoughts of the abused, and Amy’s soulful, world-weary delivery.
‘Mr. Luck and Ms. Doom’. For Willy and Amy, -read ‘Mr. Empathy and Ms. Soul’!