CD Odyssey Disc 1822: Blind Guardian

Two Blind Guardian reviews in three records is probably one too many, but I review what I randomly roll, and Blind Guardian came up again. Maybe it will help if I tell you know it’s even better than the last one…?

Disc 1822 is…Follow the Blind

Artist: Blind Guardian

Year of Release: 1989

What’s up with the Cover? This wizard and hobbit do not look like a match for the Wraith King Dude waiting for them out on that cliff. Something tells me a staff and whatever is in that bag the dude in front is clutching is not going to get the job done. Just close the door and go back to the tavern, boys…

How I Came To Know It: Just me deep-diving through Blind Guardian.

How It Stacks Up: I have five Blind Guardian albums. Of the five, I had reserved spot #3 for “Follow the Blind” but this record pleasantly surprised me, and ended up dethroning “Nightfall in Middle Earth” for top spot.

Ratings: 4 stars

Did you find those two mid-nineties reviews I wrote about Blind Guardian a bit too nerdy? A bit too concept-driven? Enter, “Follow the Blind,” which is heavier, more direct and all around chunkier. But don’t get too ahead of yourself. This is Blind Guardian, and there is plenty of kings and magic and adventure and Valhalla within. If you don’t like that stuff, you are listening to the wrong band. Please move along.

Still here? Excellent. You are in for Blind Guardian at the early end of their career. “Follow the Blind” is the band’s second record, where they infuse their brand of European power metal with less prog and more thrash. This record is a relentless attack that will make you want to drive fast and mosh violently. Please undertake these activities at separate times, however. Safety first.

While this album lacks the musical complexity of later concept records of the band, it features the same basic style elements. Singer Hansi Kursch is doing what he will do throughout his career – singing with a fast-paced phrasing that would leave a lesser vocalist breathless, but just makes him sound…excited. Andre Olbrich’s guitar is still technical and thoughtful in its approach to riffs and solos alike without ever feeling “fast for fast’s sake”.

While these two are always a joy, it is drummer Thomen Stauch that caught my attention on “Follow the Blind”. Stauch would leave the band in 2005, but he’s there for the golden age of Blind Guardian, and his drumming on “Follow the Blind” is the perfect blend of aggression and precision. His double bass work is killer, and he can snap that snare in a way that sounds like it’s left a welt.

The title track is the best song on the record, and even though it is over seven minutes long, I never get tired of its extra helping of crunch. The riffs owe something to early Metallica, but not in a way that feels derivative. Here we get the joy of rhythm guitarist Marcus Siepen, holding everything down with immaculate timing and plenty of growl.

Following on that song’s heels is “Hall of the King” and this one-two punch is the record’s finest section. This song shows off the band’s power metal roots, with plenty of virtuosity and a restless inability to settle down into a simple verse/chorus/verse situation. Instead, the band careens from one melodic concept to another at breakneck speed. It is fast to the point of dangerous, but never out of control.

The record isn’t perfect, and I found the cover of the Demon song “Don’t Break the Circle” not great. I admit I don’t know the original, but this cover did not make me want to seek it out either.

Better was the band’s cover of the Beach Boys’ “Barbara Ann”. You might expect Blind Guardian to really get in and deliberately mangle such a tune, but they play it straight. Powerful and with vigour yes, but you can see they genuinely love the source material. I found it a playful end to the record that let you know that despite all the earnestness and technical wizardry, these guys also know rock and roll should be fun.

My copy of the CD was the 2007 reissue featuring four bonus tracks. I don’t usually cotton to such excess, but these tunes were all solid and held their own against the originals. If I had to choose, I’d prefer just the original record on its own, but it wasn’t terrible having four more good songs to enjoy.

In the end I was left excited for my next Blind Guardian review. Not too soon though, boys; two out of three is plenty for now.

Best tracks: Banish from Sanctuary, Follow the Blind, Hall of the King

CD Odyssey Disc 1821: Ages and Ages

After a long, hard day I got home to find a bunch of music I’d ordered had arrived. An exciting mix of metal, country, folk, and rap records await me.

While this can be a fun experience, always look to fulfill your musical desires at your local record store first! I get the vast majority of my music at the local record store. Not only do you support local business, it’s more fun as well!

Disc 1821 is…Something to Ruin

Artist: Ages and Ages

Year of Release: 2016

What’s up with the Cover? It looks like civilization’s gone and collapsed again. Oh, civilization, you playful minx you, coming along to give us indoor plumbing and fine art only to slip back into anarchy when we least expect it.

At least we were left with some elephants this time. Sometimes all that’s left are killer robots and zombies.

How I Came To Know It: I have been a fan of Ages and Ages since I first saw them on a Tiny Desk Concert on Youtube. “Something to Ruin” was me just buying their latest record when it came out after I was already hooked.

How It Stacks Up: I have four Ages and Ages albums. Of those, I rank “Something to Ruin” at…fourth. Someone has to be last and today that someone is you, “Something to Ruin.”

Ratings: 2 stars

Just because you like a band, doesn’t mean you have to own all that band’s records. Just get the ones you like. Yes, this from the guy who just bought three Grave Digger albums and has 12 more on his wish list, but the advice is sound. This is advice I didn’t follow with Ages and Ages, leaving me with the mostly forgettable “Something to Ruin”.

If you don’t know Ages and Ages, they are an indie folk band with a lot of members (at least seven and sometimes more). They put all this talent to clever use, with lots of complicated choral arrangements and catchy phrasing that makes you want to sing along to everything, but where you are better off just picking one vocal part and chiming in where appropriate (which is, literally, how the band makes the magic).

Their first two records (2011’s “Alright You Restless”, 2014’s “Divisonary”) are revelations of this unique style, and while I haven’t reviewed either of them, I heartily recommend both. As for “Something to Ruin,” the relationship is a bit more complex.

Things start out strong, with “They Want More” which has exactly that rolling, in-the-round-adjacent magic that makes their music so much fun. Ages and Ages are also at their best when they sing uplifting songs about converting your doubts and fears into something beautiful and life affirming. That’s this song.

Unfortunately, the album doesn’t have the same magic throughout, and while the ingredients of a good Ages and Ages record are there, the songwriting is a step down from the masterful songwriting on their previous two records. The song construction is similar to previous work, but they didn’t hold my attention the same, either lyrically or musically.

The production is also noticeably more lush than previous efforts, and while it is done well, I didn’t think all the extra sound added anything to their music. Ages and Ages’ brilliance is that perfectly timed phrasing, and the ability for them to step in, around and through each other sonically while leaving space for you to appreciate both the artistry and the message. Here we have that space filled with sounds that seem self-conscious, and lyrics that are less compelling, potentially by virtue of them getting buried in the mix. “All of My Enemies” is a good example of a song that could be better but is just a little too soupy with sound.

The last song on the record is “As It Is” and returns the band to form, with a jaunty sway and some downright uplifting unison singing. “As It Is” has touches of heavier production, but it comes in and out and gives the song dynamics that many of the prior songs lack.

As bookends, “They Want More” and “As It Is” are the strongest songs of the record, but there was too much filler to wade through between them – in more ways than one – for me to recommend this record.

There was a time when as a completionist, I’d never part with this record, but that time has passed. The truth is, the cover on this record is very cool, and in moments of weakness or forgetfulness I put this one on when I should be reaching for “Alright You Restless” or “Divisionary”. There’s only one cure for that, and it is to remove the temptation. So I bid a fond farewell to “Something to Ruin” and hope it finds a happier home down the road aways.

Best tracks: They Want More, As It Is

CD Odyssey Disc 1820: Blind Guardian

My long love affair with heavy metal is in full rebirth the last few years, as I discover new bands, new sub-genres and new bands. Here’s the second review of a band that has been around a while but is relatively new to me.

Disc 1820 is…Nightfall in Middle Earth

Artist: Blind Guardian

Year of Release: 1998

What’s up with the Cover? A scene from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Ballad of Beren and Luthien. Here we have a depiction of Luthien Tinuviel dancing before the evil Morgoth (who decided to wear his “Galactus” outfit for the event).

I’m not sure why Luthien is depicted as glowing blue; if that happens in the story I don’t remember it. The dancing bit and Luthien being super hot? Yes, that checks out.

Morgoth’s crown has three glowing jewels, which are the Silmarils. If you know what these are, cool. If you don’t, in this story they’re the stakes in a high-stakes wager between Beren and Luthien’s dad, the elven King Thingol. They also serve as the MacGuffin.

If any of this high adventure fantasy talk gets your juices flowing, then the music on this record could be for you. Based on this cover, what gets Morgoth’s juices flowing is Luthien Tinuviel’s dancing but as is often the case, he’s going to feel sleepy after…

How I Came To Know It: A while back I went on a journey seeking music inspired by Lord of the Rings. One of the best outcomes was my discovery of the German band, Blind Guardian. These guys love them some LOTR, and “Nightfall in Middle Earth” is ground zero for that love.

How It Stacks Up: I currently have five Blind Guardian albums, and I’m on the lookout for five more. Of the five I already have, I’m going to put “Nightfall in Middle Earth” in at #1.

Ratings: 3 stars but almost 4

On each listen I appreciated “Nightfall in Middle Earth” a little more, but this record does not make itself easy to love. You have to scrape through a lot of bloat and excess to get to the good stuff at the centre.

“Nightfall in Middle Earth” is Blind Guardian’s love letter to J.R.R.Tolkien, and in particular to his book, “The Silmarillion”. “The Silmarillion” is one of my favourite books of all time (I’ve read it five times and will be reading it again soon) making the subject matter of this album easy to enjoy.

Also easy to enjoy is the exceptional musicianship and song structure on display here. “Nightfall in Middle Earth” is a master class in how to do power metal right. It is symphonic, bombastic, but always with an element of crunch and gravitas that metal needs to be, you know, metal.

Things get off on the right foot early with “Into the Storm,” a song featuring some Grade A guitar work from Andre Olbrich (who also writes all the music for the record). The song’s structure also evokes folk music sensibilities, including some unison singing suitable for long walks with a sword belted on your waist, and maybe later for swinging a tankard of ale at the local tavern.

“Nightfall” and follows with some guitar work that would be just as enjoyable on a mandolin or hurdy-gurdy. Here Blind Guardian go perhaps one step too far into nerd-dom, however. “Into the Storm” is adventuring with your friends in the woods. “Nightfall” is awkwardly riding the city bus in costume on your way to the Ren Fair.

The album also features a healthy dollop of classical music composition as well, with Blind Guardian showing creativity in the arrangements and the penchant for building multiple movements into the longer songs.

Th best of the bunch is “The Curse of Feanor.” It helps that Feanor is one of my favourite characters in the Silmarillion, and hearing someone sing of how ‘fey with wrath’ he is in the first person is delightful fanboy fun. The tune itself shows Olbrich’s compositional talent, and they are some of the stronger lyrics on the record (all written by lead singer Hansi Kursch.

That said, this record has some problems. One is that the lyrics are very uneven. Written for serious fans, the band doesn’t make it easy to follow along if you don’t know the subject matter very well, and even if you do I question some of Kursch’s narrative choices. Olbrich’s music achieves the heroic tone of the book much more consistently than Kursch’s words.

The other challenge with this record is it is seriously bloated. The original recording has 22 individual tracks, and while nine of those are little snippets of music or dialogue each under a minute long, that doesn’t make it better, it makes it worse. The musical interludes do not add to the album’s listening enjoyment, and the dialogue bits are clunky and read like a Dungeons and Dragons session; fun when you’re playing but not something other people want to listen to later.

I’ll always be eternally grateful that Blind Guardian took the time to set one of my dearest literary experiences to music. Despite some clunky moments, the good parts are truly great but despite my pro-Silmarillion bias I could not give this record four stars. If the band had just left all those snippets and short bits on the editing room floor and went with a 12 song (but still 60 minutes long) record, they’d have gotten there.

Best tracks: Into the Storm, The Curse of Feanor, Blood Tears, When Sorrow Sang

CD Odyssey Disc 1819: Quiet Riot

I’m off on holiday today and enjoying some of that free time revisiting a record from my youth.

Disc 1819 is…Metal Health

Artist: Quiet Riot

Year of Release: 1983

What’s up with the Cover? Little known fact: Jason Voorhees only kills kids at Crystal Lake when he’s not touring with Quiet Riot. His bandmates are probably telling him that if he took off that straitjacket he would literally slay on the axe.

They mean a guitar but given that manic gleam in Jason’s eye it might be wise to just put him on drums.

How I Came To Know It: This album was played at many a beach, bush or house party in my youth. I bought it on CD about a year or so ago after suffering an acute bout of nostalgia.

How It Stacks Up: This is my only Quiet Riot album, so it can’t stack up.

Ratings: 3 stars

Welcome to the early eighties and ground zero for the explosion of traditional heavy metal. I was in the vanguard of that movement, and as a young teen if it wasn’t metal it was crap.

I have since recovered from this judgmental and ill-considered approach to music appreciation, but back in the day Quiet Riot was a Big Deal in my peer group, and this record was everywhere.

It is easy to see the allure early on. The title track opens the record with one of metal’s greatest and most recognizable anthems. That initial guitar riff crunch, with its polished slightly lighter take on something you’d hear ten years earlier on a Sabbath record.

“Metal Health” also introduces you to singer Kevin Dubrow in the form of a high-pitched metal scream, and you know immediately these boys are all in. Dubrow has that classic metal vocal style, part growl, part anthem, part shriek, and he’s the best thing about Quiet Riot and this record in general.

The boys immediately followed up on that classic tune with one of my favourite covers of all time, with their take on Slade’s “Cum On Feel the Noize”. At the time I first heard it, I thought this song was a Quiet Riot original and it took many years to get it through my head that it belonged to Slade (cognitive dissonance is a bitch).

That said, any sense of this song ‘belonging’ to Slade is in the past tense once you’ve heard this version, which is an amped up anthem that takes to song to a whole new level of party tune. No shade on Slade, but I’ll take this cover to the desert island any day.

These two songs were part of the soundtrack to my life in the early eighties. Even though neither song was particularly danceable, both were played routinely at high school dances, where they would fill the floor with fist-pumping enthusiastic youths.

Another feature of the eighties for me was having limited purchasing power, and few avenues to hear music. My rule was to wait to see if I liked a minimum of three songs before buying an album. That likely explains why I didn’t buy “Metal Health” which goes downhill in quality after that solid 1-2 punch of the title track and “Cum On Feel the Noize”. Also, my brother owned it so I could borrow it from him whenever I had a hankering.

The rest of the record is passable, but there is very little to recommend. The songs feel undercooked in places. The band will come up with a solid riff or anthemic chorus, but there isn’t enough other stuff in the song to hold your interest, and it leads to repetition. You’re left with a lot of prolonged chorus fade-outs; ever the harbinger of a songwriter who doesn’t know where they want their melody to go.

It isn’t bad by any stretch. “Don’t Want To Let You Go” is solid, with the boys channeling the Scorpions for a metal ballad where a dude professes his loves for his girl but does it in, you know, a tough way with lots of power chords. This mattered back in the day, lest your metal be considered soft (we called such metal wannabe music “tinsel” in my day).

The album is very guitar forward, and most songs have a solo noodle. Guitarist Carlos Cavazo isn’t Randy Rhoads (who helped found the band but had moved on prior to “Metal Health”) but dude can play. It is that precise high virtuosity sound that eighties metal is known for, but even after all these years, I still like that style. Some of Cavazo’s solos are inspired, and others are more by-the-numbers, but none actively annoyed me.

The second half of the record (or side two for you vinyl types) is not the equal of the first. The songs are inoffensive and filled with good energy for driving or the various party venues this record used to provide the soundtrack to, but little stands out. “Let’s Get Crazy” is the best of the lot but it feels like the lesser version of Metal Health and suffers from that “repeat/fade” problem that I found hard to forgive.

Maybe those opening tracks are just that good, or maybe I’m suffering from a nostalgia flashback but I’m going to give this record three stars. A good time from a long time ago.

Best tracks: Metal Health, Cum On Feel the Noize, Slick Black Cadillac

CD Odyssey Disc 1818: Junior Brown and goodbye to a friend

Before I get to the review, a few words to honour a lost friend.

Our cat Vizzini has been sick for a couple of years with late-stage kidney disease. He was always a tough old bastard and was handling the less tasty prescription food and some medicine well, had a good life, and had beaten his two-year survival prognosis by a solid seven months.

That changed this week, with his health taking a sudden downturn, laboured breathing and weakness. The vet confirmed the worst, as he was having severe heart failure and on Wednesday, amid quite a lot of tears, we had to put him down.

Vizzini was a rescue cat and over the years he went from a semi-wild wacko to a loving and affection (but still crazy-at-times) lap cat. Unlike our previous two cats, Vizzini was an equal opportunity lap cat who played no favourites. He would snuggle part of the night on one of us before swapping over to the other.

He was a weird and wonderful cat, full of energy. “Loves to play” was the advertisement describing him from the rescue agency, and holy shit did he. He was also a hunter – no moth was safe, nor was a shoelace if you were foolish enough to leave it dangling.

Suffice it to say, we loved that cat a lot, and his passing leaves a large hole in our lives. He sat on pretty much every flat surface in the house (except the kitchen countertop, although it took about 10 years to break his efforts on that front). Because of this, every room is filled with memories of him sitting there, staring at you with what we came to refer to as his ‘Ghostface Killah’ expression, daring you to love him just as he was. That’s exactly what we did.

I miss you buddy. The house feels very empty without you.

Thank you for your indulgence – on to a review.

Disc 1818 is…Semi Crazy

Artist: Junior Brown

Year of Release: 1996

What’s up with the Cover? You can tell he’s the good guy because he’s wearing a white hat, but he’s also chosen to play a ‘guit string’ (a double neck guitar that is one half regular guitar/one half lap steel). Is this instrument OK? I mean, it isn’t as willfully wicked as a key-tar, but it does reflect a morality which, at the very minimum, is complicated.

How I Came To Know It: I was at some party or event a few years ago where there were a lot of people I didn’t know – I think probably my wife’s office Christmas party. I’m an extrovert and my natural inclination is to meet people and learn more about them (people are awesome!). The thing I usually want to know first is what kind of music they like. Since I don’t listen to the radio, recommendations from strangers are always welcome. One fellow recommended Junior Brown. I wrote it down to check out later and, well, here we are.

How It Stacks Up: It took a while, but last year a couple used Junior Brown albums popped up at my local record store. I’m on the lookout for a third, but of the two I have, “Semi Crazy” is second best.

Ratings: 3 stars

Junior Brown makes old time country music, with a healthy dollop or rockabilly. He has fun doing it and it shows. “Semi Crazy” is an album full of energy and love for old school fifties and sixties country music, updated with a little bit of California surf.

Brown wears his love for old school melodic structures on his sleeves. There’s little effort to show this to be a “modern take” on those old school country crooners like Conway Twitty, Merle Haggard, and George Jones. Brown doesn’t need a modern take – he knows that old school sound holds up just fine when it’s done right.

It is easy to fall into Junior Brown’s voice – a rich and deep baritone that makes you shiver in delight even after you’ve heard the same song multiple times. Getting tired of hearing that voice would be like getting tired of looking at a mountain range, or a waterfall; it’s just too filled with natural and enduring beauty to ever feel overworn.

The topics are just as traditional. “Gotta Get Up Every Morning” is a song about having a wife that likes to stay out night partying. It is brilliant, playful and fits right alongside classics in the genre like Buddy Holly’s “Midnight Shift” and Emmylou Harris’ “Feelin’ Single, Seein’ Double”.  Other tunes cover heartbreak, jail time and good old-fashioned love.

Brown is a master of those seemingly effortless turns of phrase common to old school songwriting as well, with plenty of clever wordplay and rhyme. The best example is the title track, a song about being a truck driver. At the tender age of five I was certain I would be a truck driver when I grew up. Nothing seemed cooler. That desire faded into other dreams, but listening to “Semi-Crazy” brings all that fun of learning “CB lingo” and 18 wheelers back to me. Best of many good verses:

“I'm just an old blue collar, semi-crazy road scholar
They tell me that I'm half insane
And I've been driving so long, I got diesel in my blood
And ninety weight oil on my brain”

Sign me up (minus the long hours, low pay, and chronic back injury, of course).

Accompanying Brown’s storytelling vocals is that aforementioned ‘guit’ guitar. It may look a bit weird, but Brown can make that unnatural monstrosity dance under his able fingers. I wouldn’t say he injects a ton of artistic tone into his playing like Mark Knopfler or Buck Dharma would, but that’s not what he’s going for. Instead, he makes the notes jump off the axe with precision, energy and vibrancy. A fine example is “I Hung It Up” which features a wide range of Brown showing off his talents.

The album ends with a medley of old surfer tunes that Brown injects with a hint of rockabilly. Brown plays the hell out of it, but it felt unnecessary filler tagged onto the end of the record and had me wishing I could hear the originals instead. That’s not the feeling a good cover should elicit.

The record can also occasionally veer into kitsch. Sometimes it works, like “Venom Wearin’ Denim,” a not very complementary song about a femme fatale (where the rhyming title exceeds the sometimes downright cruel imagery that follows).

Sometimes it doesn’t work, such as on “Joe the Singing Janitor,” where the concept for the character far exceeds the actual rendering of it. We get it - Joe’s a janitor that likes to sing - but apart from that, the narrative is thin.

Despite a couple of missteps, “Semi Crazy” is a good time record, played from the heart and with joy. It is what I needed during what has otherwise been a dark and depressing week. I’ll leave you with a rare non-cover photo of me and my buddy Vizz in happier times:

Best tracks: Gotta Get Up Every Morning, I Hung It Up, Semi-Crazy, Venom Wearin’ Denim

CD Odyssey Disc 1817: EPMD

I was planning to finish listening to this next record on a recent business trip, but the plane turned out to be rather loud (and I sat beside the engine) so had to finish things up when I got home. A full listen now under my belt, let’s get to it with another return to early nineties rap/hip hop.

Disc 1817 is…Business as Usual

Artist: EPMD

Year of Release: 1990

What’s up with the Cover? EPMD step into an alley full of cops, who look armed to the teeth with guns, dogs, and bad intentions.

How will our intrepid duo fare with only their fisherman hats to protect them? Well, that and the greatest most powerful weapon humans ever invented – words.

How I Came To Know It: Originally, I knew this band through my friend Spence but this album was just me out exploring their discography and seeing what I liked.

How It Stacks Up: I have three EPMD albums. They are all great, but one has to be last and this is it. Or, put more positively, in third place.

Ratings: 4 stars

The late eighties and early nineties are called rap’s golden age for a reason – it was a time of unparallelled creativity as artists were free to explore samples, concepts and beats as they discovered and defined a new musical landscape. There are plenty of fine hip hop acts around today (P.O.S., Run the Jewels, Dessa, Doechii) but 1990 had great acts emerging by the bucket(hat) load.

Enter EPMD’s third record, “Business as Usual,” which is the third of three definitely great records by emcees Erick Sermon and Parrish Smith. Sermon and Smith have the three ingredients needed for emcee greatness: 1) individual talent 2) vocal styles that are different but complementary and 3) dope beats. As ever Parrish provides the furious front-end controlled aggression chop, and Sermon counters with a chill bean-bag feel of a rap; comfy, cool and chill as hell.

While there are places on “Business as Usual” that are a bit overdone (and a suspicious amount of “jazz” sounds), on the whole these key ingredients are intact and well. The boys are back for a third time, and cool as ever.

Things get off to a great start with “I’m Mad” and a sampled high piano key (source – not to be revealed, yo) that gives a frantic emotional quality to the song, as we are treated to emcees that aren’t just going to dismantle you with rhymes, but that are going to do it with a frenetic aggression.

The duo know artfully flip between this front-of-beat attack style with a laid back jazz feel on “Hardcore” that rides the rhymes at the back end like a biker on a Harley Fat Boy going through a school zone; taking things slow so everyone can hear how cool things sound. Also for safety – no reason to risk injuring a kid with a rushed rhyme, people!

The album’s standout is “Rampage” which has the funkiest beats on the record, and an angry “I out rap you” ethos. Not content with the talents of EPMD, “Rampage” throws in a whole stanza courtesy of LL Cool J, channeling a “Jinglin’ Baby” vibe but even…LL cooler. Best Cool J moment:

“The ripper, the master, the overlordian
Playing MCs like an old accordion”

I don’t know if I’d risk ‘overlordian’ in a Scrabble game, but conversion of a basic title that connotes authority earned to a deeper “born with it” quality (overlord – overlordian) all to set up a clever bit of tempo and rhyme is sneaky smart stuff. My English degree approves.

As with previous records, EPMD songs feature a fairly significant number of references to the ‘bozak’, either from the perspective of “get off my bozak” or the aggressive grabbing of one’s own bozak. I don’t know another rap act that is as ‘bozak’ heavy as EPMD but it all feels very natural in their…er…hands.

My only minor criticism of “Business as Usual” is that it fades a little bit near the end, with the best of the best at the front of the record. This created a bit of trailing off of my enthusiasm as I went, but not so much to deny this golden age masterpiece it’s well-earned four stars.

Best tracks: I’m Mad, Rampage, Manslaughter, Give the People, Brothers on My Jock

CD Odyssey Disc 1816: Billy Strings

For the third time in four reviews we get an album from 2024. Why is this happening, you ask? We’ve covered this, people. It’s random.

Disc 1816 is…Highway Prayers

Artist: Billy Strings

Year of Release: 2024

What’s up with the Cover? The front end of a 1972 Chevelle SS, in all its glory. Well, in most of its glory – someone has modified the SS to read “BS” presumably to match Billy Strings’ initials and not the more commonly seen abbreviation.

As for the Chevelle, I am a devoted fan of the muscle car, and there are not many cars nicer than this one. First generation Camaros are the best, for sure. After that there are plenty of great muscle cars vying for second place. These early seventies Chevelles are in the conversation.

How I Came To Know It: My friend Brennan has been on me for years to give Billy Strings a chance, and while I’ve dabbled I’ve never dived in. However, this record features that Chevelle on the cover which is the sign of a greater power at work (in this case, an inner sleeve picture revealing there is a rare 502 big block under the hood). I don’t mess with the fates; I bought the record.

How It Stacks Up: Billy Strings appears on a guest on a couple of my albums (Molly Tuttle, Sierra Ferrell) but this is my only studio album of his, so it can’t stack up.

Ratings: 4 stars

Rare is the double album that can’t be whittled down to a single, and while “Highway Prayers” makes an honest race of it, it can’t quite propel itself to justifying all those damned songs. There are a ton of amazing tunes on “Highway Prayers” but could I have cut it from 20 to 14 and made a better record? Reader, I could.

That’s not a diss, mind you. Billy Strings is a prolific songwriter, and he takes the extra space and time afforded through his excess and makes good use of it. While this album at its core is bluegrass, Strings works the extra content to branch out into various forms of country and folk, and even a little indie stoner action to show us he’s down with trends popular all the way from two hundred years ago to yesterday.

Things get started in a very traditional way with a couple of classic bluegrass numbers in “Leanin’ On a Travellin’ Song” and “In the Clear”. “In the Clear” is particularly appealing, not just because of the musicianship (more on that in a moment) but also because the songs have a lot to say. It is a song that reminds us that no matter how many horses you may have under the hood, it can still sometimes get confusing about where the hell you’re going. The opening two stanzas sum it up:

“Well, here I am pulled over now
Just crying on the shoulder
Down the road that I've been driving on for days
So I aim my moral compass
But it's spinning like a wheel
And you could take that many different ways

“I've had days as black as nighttime
And nights that lasted years
I spent a thousand hours on my knees
Broke down and started praying
But I was pleading with the wind
Just to never feel the difference in the breeze”

For anyone who has ever wondered what the hell the point of it all is, or even why they’re even doing what they’re doing, Billy wrote this song for you. You can drive, or you can pray or you just sit confused and spin that internal compass but some days the answers just aren’t gonna come.

It is hard to get too upset about all the uncertainty when you have musicians as solid as you’ll encounter on “Highway Prayers”. Strings has many fine friends in the bluegrass community and he brings them all to show their stuff on this record. Bluegrass is a great genre in that everyone gets their solo, which is very egalitarian and also easy on the ears when played well.

Strings himself is famously talented on the guitar, and he earned that fame. Dude can wail in a way that few can even imagine, and some of the pickin’ he delivers here hits the very top right-hand edge of a graph measuring “too clever by half” against “still sounds great”. This can also be Strings’ downfall. Very easy to listen to, but some solos have lengths that are better suited to live-only moments. Too much of a good thing is true even at this ridiculously high level of talent.

For the most part I forgive this excess (and even liked it half the time), and Strings does a good job of juxtaposing all that technical mastery with some down-home storytelling. It is in these moments that I liked him best, covering tales of hardship (“Seven Weeks in County”), bad relationships (“Don’t Be Callin’ Me (at 4.a.m.)” and dark and dangerous hints of jealous vengeance (“My Alice”).  The way “My Alice” focuses on someone watching your girl in a way you don’t appreciate had me thinking of the voyeuristic Nick Cave song “Watching Alice”. Did the one inspire the other? I have no idea; your mind starts playing tricks on you after there’s few too many songs crammed in there.

There are a couple of grade A tunes about smokin’ grass (“Catch and Release” and “Morbud4me” that give the album a healthy dose of levity. The former’s a song about a lucky encounter with a forgiving state trooper, and the latter about very little more than the joy of getting stoned. “Morbud4me” doesn’t break any new ground lyrically, but the decision to create rhythm section by looping the sound of flicking a lighter with the burble of a water pipe is clever and surprisingly musical.

There is a lot of great stuff on “Highway Prayers” and with six fewer songs, this could’ve cracked the Top 10 list for 2024. As it is, it is a record chock full of just enough good stuff that you don’t mind a little bit of inoffensive filler, which even when too long is still played with gusto and deep wells of talent.

Best tracks: In the Clear, Seven Weeks in County, Don’t Be Callin’ Me (at 4 a.m.),  Catch and Release, Be Your Man, My Alice, Morbud4me, The Beginning of the End, Richard Petty