Dave Alvin
Blackjack David (Hightone)
No one makes a guitar ring with as much steely clarity as Alvin, whose unique brand of California alterna-folk resonates back through several generations of road-weary troubadours, while also managing to sound consistently fresh, honest and relevant. In this mostly acoustic and often achingly romantic collection of 11 songs, Alvin chronicles the hard-scrabble lives of several lost souls, who end up snagged on a barbed-wire fence of despair and faded love (“Evening Blues,” “California Snow”), and some who follow their obsessions along a more violent path (“Mary Brown”). These keenly observed portraits of men and women whose stories will never be told in People magazine are meant to be savored with a bottle on the table and a cigarette in hand, but even teetotalers will find a lot to enjoy here.
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