Mike McClure – Looking Up
Independent – 25 September 2020
A Red Dirt singer-songwriter and producer, Looking Up is Mike McClure’s tenth solo album and one that arrives after five years during which there have been dramatic changes in his life, including struggling with insecurity, finding new love, family healing and getting sober.
He opens with I Am Not Broken, a tribute to lost friends, among them long-time bassist and songwriting mentor Tom Skinner, a defiant walking beat song of survival that sits him firmly in Steve Earle guitar country territory, dressed up with horns. Fans will recognise the second track, Distractions, from his 2011 album, and hitherto most recent release, Fifty Billion, here reworked as an acoustic number, guitar bolstered by cello, and changing the line “You can’t help but moan, and I can’t help but laugh” to “You are not alone, and you are not your past” in response to events such as COVID and Black Lives Matter as well as him turning his life around.
One year clean of alcohol, the steady-paced organ-backed bluesy Southern country-rock Holiday Blown concerns the impact of drinking, both on his family and himself, couched in a general theme of addiction (“daddy likes that morphine, daddy likes amphetamines too, daddy likes anything make him feel like he wants to”).
Elsewhere, the lyric to the Eagles-esque Orion provides the album title, the song, with its desert country tone, reflecting how, at night, staring up at the star gave him a sense of guidance, while the casual Petty-like swagger Here I Am is an unambiguous statement of what he was and where he is now. That self-examination is extended to the outlaw country flavours of the drawled slow striding Become Someday. The penultimate, twangsome Little Bit Of Love is a number about finding salvation through letting go of things unneeded and embracing togetherness, it was the first song he and duetting new partner Chrislyn Lawrence (who co-produced) wrote together. The album closer is the Red Dirt alt-country Sword And Saddle, the title underscoring its early Guy Clark-like anthemic assured guitar chords driven swagger, a strong and infectious end to an album that both marks the end of McClure’s past and the bright direction of his future.