An actual rodeo riding cowboy, Zach Aaron thrilled us back in 2020 with his album Fill Dirt Wanted to the extent that it was one of our favourite albums of that year. While that album mixed his Texas roots with some Oklahoma dirt (with a Woody Guthrie influence well to the fore) along with a fine dash of dark humour, his new album, This Lovely War, cleaves more to the folky singer songwriter tradition of Guy Clark and John Prine while Terry Allen hides in the wings. It’s a more full bodied disc with Fill Dirt Wanted’s spare instrumentation replaced by full band set ups laying the bed rock for Aaron’s sardonic songs.
The album opens on a grand note with Aaron and stumblebum accompaniment – plucked banjo and squirreling guitars – regretting the march of progress which has cast aside western traditions on May The Iron Horse Get Fed. Nostalgic and suffused with regret, the song captures some of that longing for simpler times which fed much of Bogdanovich’s Last Picture Show. Whether the protagonist of the next song, Fall Down Drunk, is a victim of this is perhaps moot but he’s certainly down in his cups as Aaron delivers a magnificent portrait of a drunk who see-saws between despair and hope, gulping down last orders while reckoning that Jesus could save him if “he could only get him on the phone.” It’s a classic George Jones like beer stained confessional and Aaron delivers it perfectly, reminding one of Sturgill Simpson’s reclamation of classic country mores. Closely allied is the tremulous It’s You, a more redemptive song which finds Aaron rising from the gutter having found a soul mate who will take him forward from his Kristofferson like Sunday morning comedowns. It’s followed by the sweet keening sounds of Songbird which suggests that the lovers can rise above their problems with Aaron giving the song a touch of classic Willie Nelson circa Red Headed Stranger vibe.
Elsewhere, Aaron digs into history on the dark waltz of Someone’s Got To Bleed, the dainty two step instrumentation something of a danse macabre on this bloody tale. Lightening the mood there’s Aaron’s version of Marty Robbins’ Cowboy In A Continental Suit, a fine western morality tale based on a rodeo and Aaron closes the album with another rodeo tale. Latigo Joe is a talking blues about a cowboy convict offered a chance to ride a wild horse which ends in his swift demise. It’s a throwback to the type of song which typified the excellence of Fill Dirt Wanted and it’s the topping here on another excellent album from Zach Aaron.
Blabber 'n' Smoke 