Ike Reilly
(Rock Ridge Music)
Ike Reilly holds nothing back. He knows only one way to write - passionately, honestly, fiercely - and one way to sing - as if all the world has to pay attention, and the only way to do that is to spit out the words quickly, making them sound spontaneous even though the poetic leaps are so rich there's no way they just popped into his head. Hard Luck Stories is the third masterpiece in a row after 2007's We Belong to the Staggering Evening and 2008's Poison the Hit Parade. Reilly has been making music off and on for two decades, but he's finally attracting the attention he deserves with the best music of his career.
Hard Luck Stories continues the trend of these past two records, exaggerating events as disparate as the inability to pay an electric bill or the refusal of a woman to love him into raucously rocking exuberant thrill rides of basic rock'n'roll. There is nothing new in the sound of Ike Reilly and his cohorts (no longer referred to as the Ike Reilly Assassination, presumably because the whole band doesn't show up on every track, and some other players drop in now and again). If you've heard Bob Dylan's electric stuff, or early Bruce Springsteen, or even recent Hold Steady, you'll be familiar with the template. Guitars, bass, drums, maybe keyboards hugging the chord changes, occasionally slipping in an extra hook under Reilly's verbose yet catchy lyrics set to the simplest of melodies. And it never once gets boring.
The album's centerpiece is a duet with Shooter Jennings, a kindred spirit in truth-telling, who helps Reilly take "The War on the Terror and the Drugs" into a majestic look at the ridiculousness of fighting words or concepts rather than actions. Here as elsewhere, Reilly's depiction of sex can be appropriately vulgar, as the "young ones to cream on" are juxtaposed with the "one with the arm I wouldn't mind being seen on." If you're trying to fend off terror with sex, well, it does probably take all kinds of approaches. And when the song shifts gears (as Reilly songs inevitably do) away from humor to a seriously horrific verse describing something truly terrible, the desire to lose the pain makes the idea of fighting "terror" seem even more hopeless. Did I mention this is an incredibly bouncy, undeniably infectious rock sing-along?
Elsewhere, David Lowery from Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven offers duet vocals on the truly sad "The Ballad of Jack and Haley," which shows the pain of the war on drugs up close and personal; "7 Come Eleven" makes getting high and falling in love seem interchangeable; Reilly's tears at rejection ruin the floorboards in "Morning Glory"; and "The Golden Corner" verges on being a modern-day "Born to Run," albeit with a much simpler level of desire for merely one great day.
Hard Luck Stories was released digitally a few months ago, but the CD comes with two bonus tracks - a new song, "Flowers on Down" which is haunting and sad, and a live acoustic-only version of his excellent "Broken Parakeet Blues" from the last album.
Standout Tracks: "The War on the Terror and the Drugs," "The Ballad of Jack and Haley," "7 Come Eleven." STEVE PICK
