JUSTIN TOWNES EARLE
Single Mothers
Vagrant 4220

www.vagrant.com
 

Justin Townes new album Single Mothers is kind of perplexing. At a few seconds under 30 minutes it is very short with ten compact songs. It opens with a pair of similarly doo wop sounding songs in “Worried About the Weather” and “Single Mothers.” What follows does go in different directions. I’d have suggested separating these two and using an altered sequence.

“My Baby Drives” is open throttle rock and roll. On “Today and a Lonely Night,” Paul Niehaus switches from electric guitar to pedal steel ramping up the song’s loneliness. “Picture in a Drawer” is even lonelier, as bass and drums drop out and it is just pedal steel and acoustic guitar behind Justin. “Wanna Be a Stranger” is an aching mid-tempo rocker. “White Gardenias is another slow country weeper. “Time Shows Fools” is a reflective and philosophical little rocker. “It’s Cold in this House” is a lonely late nighter with more weepy pedal steel and a hint of ’50s RnB. The album closes with the spirited rocker “Burning Pictures.”

Throughout, this brief set has really lean arrangements. The players, with Justin on acoustic guitar, are Niehaus, on guitars and pedal steel, with Mark Hedman and Matt Pence on bass and drums. Each time out, Justin Townes Earle sounds a little more assured and comfortable. By now, he is clearly his own man on his own road. The long shadow and deep footsteps his father, Steve Earle, casts are really no longer an issue. Enjoy Justin’s work on its own considerable merits. He has earned that much.

— Michael Tearson