Gill Landry "The Ballad of Lawless Soirez" (Nettwerk)
By Ryan Harig
Monday. Apr 23, 12:51 PM
Dirty, full of visions, and pulsing with intensity.

I was quite surprised upon listening to The Ballad of Lawless Soirez. Mostly because what I heard was something I thought I had encountered too many times before, but shit… something magical happens in between simple bar chords and drunken sing-song-y tempos here: a great album is found, with a real beating heart. Real music for folks who like it that way: dirty, full of visions, and pulsing with intensity.

I was given a full stack of albums to review the week that this fell in my lap. After flipping through two other wishy washy discs, this album crept up on me. I think there’s just something about horns and upright bass that sounds damn good when someone’s talking about whores and whiskey. It just works well, and you can expect much of it throughout The Ballad of Lawless Soirez, which is in essence a concept album full of twists and turns, much like a stage play mystery where the antagonists turn into protagonists and vice versa.

My favorite would have to be the slow rambling of "Gasoline Legs," a honest, pretty song that takes the earlier track "Desiree" and makes it that much better, rolling out of your speakers like a sweaty New Orleans band fully equipped to make your heart hurt and your throat dry.

It’s a feeling: something intense and suited for late night drives and dive bars, something that Gill Landry invokes intensely on his latest release. It may be familiar in songs of the past, it may combine elements not thought to be mixed, but it works well and continues to get better with age… much like whiskey.
www.gilllandry.com
www.nettwerk.com

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Ryan Harig

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