Engagingly easygoing alt-Americana-country-rock drawl underpinned by darkly humorous, droll lyrics in this excellent fourth LP by the sharp 25-year-old Asheville, North Carolina singer-songwriter in this follow-up to 2022’s Boat Songs. Running thematic images include low-quality hotel rooms, loneliness, dysfunctional living, alcohol, birds flying in and out, and eschatological fears, adding an additional irony that Lenderman had aspirations to be a priest when younger. Highlights include She’s Leaving You with its fabulous talent show video, Joker Lips (“Draining cum from hotel showers / Hoping for the hours to pass a little faster … Please don't laugh only half of what I said was a joke/ Every Catholic knows he could've been Pope”); Wristwatch (“So you say I’ve got a funny face/ It makes me money / So you say I’ve wasted my life away, Well I got a beach home up in Buffalo/ And a wristwatch that’s/ A compass and a cell phone / And a wristwatch that/ Tells me you’re all alone”); the Dylan-referencing Rudolph (“How many roads must a man / Walk down 'til he learns / He's just a jerk who flirts / With the clergy nurse 'til it burns”); and the 10-minute epic Bark At the Moon (“I've never seen the Mona Lisa / I've nevеr really left my room/ I've been up too latе with Guitar Hero / Playing 'Bark at The Moon”). Packed with playful references and painfully funny twists under a conventional sound that occasional adds subtle surprises, it’s a rich seam of entertaining darkness worth mining from top to bottom. Out on ANTI.
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