Well, this month’s playlist is definitely a good one. If you haven’t checked out Brandi Carlile, Wade Bowen, Caleb Caudle, Mike & the Moonpies…well, here’s your chance. It was a strong month for singles, and we’ve got some promising new songs from Willie Nelson, Kacey Musgraves, Ashley Monroe, and Red Shahan. There seemed to be something for everyone in February, from Americana to Texas country to the mainstream. And if you’re shocked that a Cole Swindell song made our list, well, deal with it. Thanks as always to Zack for supplying the Spotify version, and my apologies in advance for the lack of Courtney Patton on that platform.
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The two most important things in life are loss and love. This album has songs that are about both of those things, and from what I can conclude from listening to the lyrics, those are the two themes here; loss, and love. What better way to make a record about life?
“Lost Without You” gets right into the loss part. He’s missing someone, and he says, “until it’s over, I’m lost without you”, so perhaps that means he has no way of getting someone back. Perhaps they’re dead, or with someone else. The vagueness of these lyrics makes it hard to understand. I do like the instrumentation of this song, though. The guitars and overall sound are nice. “N.Y.C. in the Rain” also has lyrics I cannot seem to puzzle out. It seems to be a song about loneliness, how everyone is on their own course. People leave each other behind, or treat them badly, which causes them to feel like outsiders. While that’s a very sad theme, I can’t quite connect to this song emotionally. There is some very nice piano, though, and I definitely like the song instrumentally.
Everything changes for me lyrically with the third song, “Headlights”. It’s a song about dreams and how they never turn out quite like you would expect. I like how the lyrics address the fact that dreams look better until you start putting real effort into them. He’d rather dream something crazy than to see his dream is dead. “Empty Arms” is a song I really enjoy. To me, it’s about a long-distance relationship. He buys postcards, sends them with words she already knows, that they’re going to stay together, despite the brutality of the world. It’s a nice moment of lightness after the three heavier songs. I also like the more rock-sounding guitars on the song. It’s one of my favorites off of the album, I think.
“Love That’s Wild” has an interesting beginning, where I thought the sound would be completely different. After a few seconds of effects, steel guitar hits your ears, and makes this one of the most country offerings from this album. This is yet another love song. It talks about a couple who are deeply attached to one another. She made him better after he was broken, and now she’s his queen. I can’t help liking this song for its simplicity. The title track is a more acoustic offering, with only guitar and a couple other instruments backing up Caleb’s vocals. The line that really gets me is “there’s no laughter in this house”. I wish he wouldn’t repeat it, but he really paints the picture of a broken home very well. Once again, I’m wishing we had more specific details so that I could connect emotionally with this song, but it’s not a bad track by any means.
“Way You Oughta Be Seen” describes someone whom he’s seen through many different phases in their lives. He’s seen the highs, the lows, and the way they ought to be seen. He wishes everyone could see her the way she should be seen. “Stack of Tomorrows” once again has that more upbeat tempo that I really like on this album. It seems to be a song about time. He wants to do as much as he can before his time is up, so he’s stacking up tomorrows with his partner. He spends the last of the song repeating the same line about three or four times in a row, and it gets a bit tedious.
One of my other favorites off of the album is “Madelyn”. It has some really well-done fiddle. It’s the first song I listened to off of this album, and it made me interested to try the rest. In the song, he’s talking to Madelyn about their lives together. He talks about some of the painful things in their past, and then says he knows they’ll make it. He’ll help her when she needs it. Again, I really like these earnest love songs. “Six Feet From the Flowers” is one of the saddest songs I have heard all year. It’s all about a man who has lost his wife. He talks about how he has her pictures and trinkets. He has his workbench, but he hasn’t used it to build anything because he has nobody to build for. These are the kinds of details that really connected me to this song. The backing vocal of a sort of choir, and the organ in the background really give this song a somber feeling. In the end, years have passed, and the man dies, going home to see his wife. This has to be the highlight of the album. There is just too much feeling and thought poured into this track. If you listen to anything off of this record, make it this song. It’s unbearably sad, but it makes up for all of the other songs I failed to connect with.
“Until It’s Over” is the final track on the album. It’s a love song, where he talks about a woman who keeps him on track. The thing about this song is he keeps repeating the word “anymore”. It quickly got old, but I did like the idea of the song, as well as the acoustic instrumentation. It harkens back to the first song, because he says “until it’s over, I’m lost without you”. I’m not a fan of the instrumental that ends the song, but as everyone reading my posts knows, that’s just my personal taste.
In the end, I thought this was a solid album. The instrumentation was always very well-done, and the musical styles varied enough that I never got bored. There are some really good songs on here. Still, the thing that really brings this album down for me is the vagueness in a lot of the lyrics, and the fact that I can’t quite connect to the majority of the songs. If they had all been more specific in the pictures and characters Caleb Caudle painted with his words, this could easily have been a great album. Still, this has definitely made me interested to try out some of his other albums, and he is now an artist I’m intrigued to watch.
