Ben Nichols
(Liberty & Lament/The Rebel Group)
More than any other band around these days, Lucero have been exploring the complex realities of southern manhood for a decade and five albums. Their songs are populated with hook-ups and break-ups, long tours and empty venues, sweet girls left behind and heartbreakers on the road, fathers proud and unimpressed alike, wars at home and afar-all rendered through tense guitars, drummer Roy Berry's gremlin rhythms, and Ben Nichols' throaty growl. Listening to their catalog, it's not hard to imagine the books back and forth during long hauls between American cities. There's likely a lot of Faulkner, some Hemingway and London, possibly some Robert Stone. No doubt there are many Cormac McCarthy novels littering the van, their pages dog-eared, spines creased, covers bent.
It's not surprising-in fact, it's almost inevitable-that for his first solo outing, Nichols would find inspiration in McCarthy's translucently violent 1985 novel Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West. Recorded for a recent acoustic tour with punk refugees Tim Barry and Chuck Ragan, the seven-song Last Pale Light in the West very loosely recounts the novel's showdown between "the kid" and "the judge" and in broad brushstrokes paints a landscape that turns every man into a killer and every encounter into violence. "Hey hey Davy Brown," he sings on the two-stepping "Davy Brown," "you weren't born a killer, but you can't tell now."
Nichols jettisons Lucero's grinding guitars for an unplugged sound with acoustic guitar, elegant pedal steel courtesy of Todd Beene, and Rick Steff's accordion and piano. At times, especially on the closing instrumental "The Judge," the EP sounds like a rough-and-tumble film score, an ambient backdrop for Nichols' instantly recognizable vocals. In Lucero, his rasp sounds as abrasive as the guitars, but on these songs it's naked and unadorned-the musical equivalent of worn leather and sun-chapped skin, the voice of someone lost in the wilderness. In short, it's the ideal voice for a western.
Despite its literary inspiration and acoustic palette, Last Pale Light is no polite, tweedy coffeeshop endeavor. Blood Meridian provides merely an outline for this set of songs, but because Nichols has his own concerns to worry over, the EP sounds like its own work rather than merely a soundtrack to the movie in his head.
Standout Tracks: "Davy Brown," "Toadvine," "The Judge" STEPHEN M. DEUSNER
