Four star efforts from Patterson Hood and Dean Owens lead the week.
Kameron Marlowe
Sad Songs for the Soul
I appreciate the effort to contrast with Music Row’s mindless escapism, but the skill just isn’t there. Opens with a dreadful, mealy-mouthed Cam cover and never improves much from there; his singing consistently sounds like a poor imitation of Drake White. The best way that I can describe it is that he sings like he never learned how to swallow his saliva while he’s singing. His phrasing sounds moist in a way that, to my ears, is just unpleasant.
Patterson Hood
Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams
The aesthetic is more Sparklehorse than DBT, but it’s a shift that’s perfectly matched to Hood’s moodiest and most introspective songwriting to date: A pivot he executes gracefully, on an album that explores the past without ever once lapsing into too-easy nostalgia.
Wyatt Flores
Live at Cain’s
He continues his rapid evolution into one of the genre’s most exciting new talents, and he shines brightest on stage. But the mixing, especially in balancing the vocals, distracts from his gifts on what surely won’t be his last live album.
Chris Kläfford
What I’m Running From
It takes legit chops to mimic Chris Stapleton with the precision that Sweden’s answer to The Beard of Truth does here. And there’s some meat to these songs, too, especially wrt matters of faith. But the mimicry detracts from that. Kläfford’s clearly talented, but who is he?
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