Will Beeley – Highways and Heart Attacks
Tompkins Square – Out Now
The first artist that sprang to mind once I had started listening to Highways and Heart Attacks was John Prine and especially his recent Tree of Forgiveness album; like that record, this clocks in at just over half an hour and doesn’t spend much time adding any superfluous details to the songs. Also like Prine’s, Beeley’s first in forty years is written with dry wit and performed with a relaxed vibe. Indeed, on opener ‘Been a Drifter’, even him singing ‘I can’t remember ever being this cold’ sounds wry, and the repeated ‘surprises me, from time to time, that I haven’t been buried’ is almost chuckled (although a twist of fate saw him survive a heart attack just after this album was recorded). Of course, he could also be indirectly referring to his career as a musician, which, after a lot of hard work creating little immediate commercial success from his first two albums (both Gallivantin’ and Passing Dream have since been reissued by Tompkins Square), was put on lengthy hold while he worked as a truck driver to support his family. Perhaps the whole thing is now rather diverting to him…
Highways maintains the air of gentleness that permeates through Gallivantin’, but with more instrumentation than the solo guitar of that album. Beeley’s voice too, although aged by the years, maintains a friendliness that lends his songs an accessibility that is helped along here by a band playing skilful and sympathetic music that offers few unnecessary notes. Take the heart-wrenching ‘The Homeless Ain’t Just Hobos Anymore’, with Beeley singing of ‘the staggering reality’ that ‘the kids ain’t got a home’. It is just two and a half minutes, with a straight tambourine percussion and pedal steel working with electric guitar and a light acoustic guitar core to help along Beeley’s matter of fact observation of a state of affairs, and its directness and concision make it all the more affecting. The same can be said for ‘Singin’ Lullabyes’, with its gorgeous violin working with Beeley’s lone acoustic guitar line to create a song built on simple lyrics (‘one good shot is all you need to be a mom and dad’). It could come across as sentimental, but it all just holds together so well.
Like Prine’s Tree, there is mortality running through Highways, from the destitute families of ‘Homeless’ to the pensive storytelling of ‘Lullabyes’, but the heartbreaking melancholy epic first person narrative ‘It Didn’t Feel Like Christmas’ underpins the whole set and stretches out to just under six minutes, a chunk longer than the other nine songs here. This one documents a lonely figure stuck down in the ‘so damn hot’ Texan landscapes and pining for the writer of the letter he has clutched in his hand: ‘It sure is good to feel you in my hands again’. Beeley has a knack for plainly singing simple and sharp lyrics and this song is the best example of his skills on this album. Lines like ‘my life is so damn empty when I don’t have you’ are straight up but so honestly sang in that husky voice that, when he cries ‘why do these things happen, Lord?’, you can almost see him shaking his fist at the heavens. But our narrator is a man on his knees and when the song shifts into spoken word at the mid-point, with just a slightly humid electric guitar piece at the back, and he books ‘the same room as last year’ at a motel and admits he doesn’t ‘need a wake up call’, your heart goes out. It’s a great song and a highlight on an album that is very welcome. Beautifully written and performed, if Highways and Heart Attacks is your first taste of Will Beeley, you will soon be seeking out the rest of the catalogue.
Highways and Heart Attacks is out now.
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