Slaid Cleaves
(Music Road)
Slaid Cleaves is an especially incisive singer/songwriter, and while far too few people may be aware of his talents, his new album provides all the proof needed. Cleaves has been responsible for several fine efforts over the course of the past ten years, his more recent releases in collaboration with erstwhile mentor and producer Gurf Morlix. Yet despite the fact he calls Austin home, he's never coexisted all that comfortably with a standard Americana vibe. Everything You Love Will Be Taken Away remedies that disparity to a certain extent, nodding towards tradition with rootsy, rustic, sepia-tinted sensibilities. Infused with fiddles, pedal steel and mandolin, these songs find Cleaves in a somewhat melancholy mood, but his bittersweet melodies manage to soar triumphantly on the strength of rousing, resilient refrains. "Cry" is a perfect case in point; mellow and subdued at first, it's escalated emotionally by an irrepressible, compelling chorus:
"Cry
for your mama,
Cry for your dad,
Cry for everything you
knew
They never had"
That song sets the standard for the ten tracks that follow, and remarkably, Cleaves keeps the bar equally as high thereafter. Deliberate and determined, the music resonates with ringing blue collar anthems like "Hard to Believe," "Beautiful Thing" and "Tumbleweed Stew." In the desperate, downtrodden lament "Black T-Shirt" Cleaves conveys a tortuous tale about a young rebel sinking deeper in the abyss. "Twistin'" ventures into equally dark terrain via a harrowing portrait of "Graveyard sons and daughters, passing through an unfriendly world" while watching as an executioner goes through his paces. Cleaves' talent for etching dark descriptive scenarios from his first-person perspective has him maintaining a quiet, understated authority, coupled with a world-weary view filled with both restlessness and resolve.
With his gift for narrative, it's no wonder Cleaves inspired Stephen King to pen the album's liner notes. He's entitled to the endorsement, because while the title may denote defeat, Everything You Love Will Be Taken Away proves nothing less than a triumph.
Standout Tracks: "Cry," "Green Mountains and Me," "Twistin'" LEE ZIMMERMAN
