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