As guitarist and frequent songwriter with
the Jayhawks
,
Gary Louris
was on hand from the group's atmospheric
country
-influenced early recordings to their later grand-scale
pop
productions, so it shouldn't be much of a surprise that
Louris
' first solo album should embrace both ends of this musical spectrum.
Vagabonds
manages to sound grand and organic at once, with the arrangements and production capturing a sense of the wide open spaces of
Hollywood Town Hall
and
Rainy Day Music
, especially on the beautifully heart-tugging
"She Only Calls Me on Sundays,"
while also encompassing the more ambitious melodic conceits of
Smile
Sound of Lies
on tracks like
"Black Grass"
"Omaha Nights."
There's also quite a bit of stylistic cross-talk between these two poles, and
' lyrics reach for a more personal and philosophical tone than he's offered in the past. There's a poignant search for answers in
"Omaha Nights"
and a longing for the solace of love in
"To Die a Happy Man"
that digs deeper into the psyche than he's been willing to go in the past, and even simpler compositions such as
"We'll Get By"
"I Wanna Get High"
reveal a new level of maturity and a willingness to experiment.
has rarely if ever been in better form as a singer than he is on
, delivering his lyrics with a passion and sincerity that serve their emotional power well, and his guitar work is as strong and forceful as ever.
Chris Robinson
of
the Black Crowes
produced the sessions (with
Thom Monahan
engineering), and the pairing is an inspired one; the result is an album that sounds full-bodied but natural and uncluttered, and gives
' fine songs plenty of room to reveal their virtues. Anyone who has followed
' career knows that
is a major talent, and
demonstrates he's still capable of making remarkable music outside the framework of the band. ~ Mark Deming