Contemplate the drifter. Is he not, in some significant means, sadder than his nearest factors of comparability, the rambler and the gambler? The gambler has an habit to playing and the rambler has ants in his pants. However the drifter—he simply drifts. That’s some lowdown, harrowing, no-agenda-left-save-for-dying shit. Hank Williams understood this. That’s why he adopted the persona Luke the Drifter in 1953, to file a few of the most piteously unhappy songs ever written. Ascendant Texas-born nation singer Charley Crockett is aware of it too. He’s seen lots over the course of a slow-burning decade-long profession, and he spills a complete freeway stuffed with guts on his latest LP, Lonesome Drifter.
Lonesome Drifter’s lead-off title observe is a menacing shot throughout the bow. Over a shuffling groove gleefully splitting the distinction between Dylan’s “Strong Rock” and the Allmans’ “Midnight Rider,” Crockett vituperatively disclaims: “Everyone’s working in them cotton fields, just a bit bit totally different than they used to really feel.” It’s a jolting, anxious second—the nervous invocation of cotton fields, the kind of factor that may flip up in Randy Newman’s subversive creativeness. The track vehicles alongside, untroubled. “I’m only a lonesome drifter on the one freeway.” Nonetheless. With these fuel costs?
I might like to report that issues enhance for our narrator, however hassle for the troubadour will not be a voluntary opt-out. The second observe, “Sport I Can’t Win,” is a Waylon-worthy pissed-off Nashville litany of false guarantees and bounced checks abetted by Burrito Brothers pedal metal. As a craftsman, Crockett has turn out to be admirably adroit. Loads of songs on Lonesome Drifter inform multi-layered tales, however the longest one stretches barely past three-and-a-half minutes. The laudable financial system of language resembles his fellow Texan Townes Van Zandt. So, for essentially the most half, does the temper. The downward trajectory traced on “Beneath the Neon Lights” wouldn’t solely disappoint Crockett’s personal mom, however Merle Haggard’s too. The gloriously peak-bummer Kristofferson-style “This Loopy Life” makes completely no try to make sense of the singer’s loopy life, however does provide the irresistible olive department: “Darling, you already know I look after you/Although I’m not too good with love.” The “too” does a whole lot of work.
Hold across the dangerous a part of city sufficient, and also you would possibly meet a man like Crockett. “By no means No Extra” resembles nothing a lot as fellow trickster Tom Waits’ 1976 Crayola noir Small Change. “One Trick Pony” grabs the title from Paul Simon’s acerbic 1980 music satire both by osmosis or deep cinema habits. Doesn’t strictly matter. “I’m sure to inform the reality the best way that gamblers not often do,” Crockett snarls. “They be tying up your noose and calling you buddy.” With pals like that, who wants hangmen? Perhaps it isn’t a coincidence that being a one trick pony is likely to be a criticism leveled in opposition to him.
