Luke Winslow-King – Blue Mesa
Bloodshot Records – Out Now
Recorded in Italy, while parts may have laid down in the Big Easy, Luke Winslow-King‘s fourth album in five years largely sidesteps the New Orleans R&B colours that have percolated through previous releases. The blues, per se, remain, however, as evidenced from the soulful slow sway opener You Got Mine, co-penned with his late collaborator, Lissa Driscoll, who passed away last year and whose loss informs much of the album, with its Sam Cooke echoes and call and response ending. Likewise, on a swampier uptempo note, the rocky choogling Leghorn Women with its dirty electric guitar.
Spilling over from 2016’s I’m Glad Trouble Don’t Last Always, the five-minute slow groove, organ-backed regret-themed Better For Knowing You, the familiar John Lee Hooker delta blues licks of the driving choppy rhythm Thought I Heard You and (not a Randy Travis cover) the title track’s soulful slow sway with its weeping guitar solo all deal with the fall-out from his divorce.
There’s a hint of a Stones guitar riff on the latter’s intro, one that subsequently recurs in the same capacity with the organ-laced country blues boogie Born To Roam which, with its line about ‘no direction home’ specifically nods to Dylan’s Like A Rolling Stone. There are further rootsy country colours to be found on album closer Farewell Blues, a lyrically poignant song written after learning of his late father’s diagnosis with cancer, with its Johnny Cash rhythmic bounce bolstered by fiddle and pedal steel solos.
He’s not, however, one to be brought down by the blues and wallow in a mud of self-pity. Indeed, his delivery throughout is generally light, as indeed are several of the melodies, as for example the throwaway playfulness of Chicken Dinner, another Driscoll co-write, with its New Orleans horns and jerky cha-cha rhythm. Further to its ultimately optimistic perspective, hope and determination to rise above things anchor the sentiment of the waltzing gospel sway Break Down The Walls as it builds to a rousing finale while there’s an appropriately sunny beat to After The Rain with its talk of brighter days ahead when “it will all be clear.”
The album title (and the song’s lyrics) serves as an image of the distant horizon and the need to move on. The last few years have been a hard road for Winslow-King to walk, but, as this album amply proves, his feet haven’t failed him yet.
Photo by Victor Alonso