Brian Fallon – Local Honey
Thirty Tigers – 27 March 2020
Local Honey is Brian Fallon’s third solo album since his band, The Gaslight Anthem, went on an indefinite hiatus. It finds the now 40-year-old Fallon all grown up and in the moment, putting aside the wildness of youth for the responsibilities of fatherhood and maturity of middle-age.
Taking his foot off the musical accelerator, the songs here are slow and reflective, though not without that punchy dynamic that’s informed the best of his work and earned those Springsteen comparisons. The album, taking its title from roadside signs advertising local honey, with its medicinal benefits, it opens with a song for his daughter, When You’re Ready, a simple Springsteeneqsque ballad that encapsulates the hopes and fears of all fathers. Imagining the rocky road of romances ahead, he sings “In this life, there will be trouble, but you shall overcome/They’ll hurt you in your heartstrings, they’ll leave you in the dust/But you do just like I told you, stand strong and hold your own”, not wanting them to grow up and leave but hoping that “When you’re ready to choose someone/Make sure they love you half as much as me”.
While there’s none of the arena dynamics of past work, there’s still a widescreen quality to 21 Days, a song which, on the surface, seems to be about a breakup but, more pertinently addresses kicking a habit and the period of time before the craving ebbs, in Fallon’s case smoking, as he confesses “We used to talk over coffee/But now I’m gonna have to find another friend”.
Moving away from personal concerns to a narrative approach, the wearied, slow waltzing Vincent is his contribution to the murder ballad canon in which a good Christian South Texas girl named Jolene (“but I hate that song”) finds herself in a relationship that started out decent but soon turned mean and violent (“Hit me so hard that the room used to spin”), the Vincent of the title being the lover to whom she turns for escape, the song proving to be a parting farewell (“I couldn’t run if I wanted to now… After tonight I won’t be home for a while”) after finally snapping and stabbing her abuser to death, though whether she’s heading to jail or obscurity is left open.
There’s a bluesy touch to the fingerpicked, softly sung, rhythmically lazily loping I Don’t Mind (If I’m With You), a muffled drum bolstered number that carries over that need of someone to turn to in the darkness (“like a light in the long dark hall” a reference to how he was afraid of the dark as a kid and his parents set a night light to illuminate the path to heir room) and get away from whatever history troubles you (“They set me on fire and I did a lot of burning/Told me I didn’t know things I thought I knew for certain”), as he sings “now the wind’s getting colder and the night’s getting cruel/But I don’t mind, I don’t mind if I’m with you”.
The mood sustains on the Lonely For You Only, a classic sounding Fallon number full of bruised romanticism and a search for salvation devoid of self-pity (“I spent my nights alone, and I rode the wheels off/I simply ain’t the first thief, honey, hold up on a cross/And I don’t believe that anybody here should cry for me”) and how being open and honest is the best path to catharsis and expiation (“come talk to me, I can’t see inside your head/There’s a bitter beast that comes to feed on the things we never said/Tell me all the vicious things that no one knows but God./You simply ain’t the worst that I’ve seen stumbling through the dark”), the line about how “troubled lovers run away and bleed for a while/In poems about Jersey girls they knew in another life”, surely a nod to Tom Waits.
There’s almost a Christmassy feel to the cascading notes that open Horses, something that permeates throughout on another song about finding light, forgiveness and redemption in love (“In my chains, I saw us running/Free as all the pretty horses in my dreams/Maybe it was planned when the angels spoke your name into existence”) and the belief that “any lie you told can be forgiven/If you love enough to believe”.
Conjuring thoughts of Mark Knopfler channelling Tom Petty, drawing on biblical teachings (“when I get to heaven/There will be no more hard feelings”), the penultimate track, Hard Feelings. again explores forgiveness in the wake of a broken relationship and the wariness and desperation involved in the perhaps unwise rekindling of a flame (“it’s hard when you’re hurt/To let somebody in again”) when “How easy it would’ve been/If I’d never seen you again/Like every other story in the book”.
Unlikely as it may seem, You Have Stolen My Heart, an unadulterated love song about hearts entwined across time (“maybe on another night, we were lovers in another life/Or maybe we were only strangers on mystery trains”) and the final track on an all too short collection, adopts a slow sway calypso rhythm and draws its lyrical inspiration from The Smiths’ Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want, Fallon, as he does on several occasions here, tearing down the walls he’d built around himself and letting his feelings pour out.
The song and the album end with the line “And now if you need me, you know where to find me/I’ll be always falling under your spell”, a sentiment his legion of fans will surely endorse. Local Honey hits the sweet spot.