![]() Painting Houses, too, is wonderous, led by a piano and a pair of interweaving acoustics. It’s a thing of deep, restorative beauty. An inviting snare roll calls the band into action, dreamy pedal steel and lingering sax notes tangling together as minimal guitar arpeggios flicker left and right. Taylor’s yearning hushed tones on the gospel If It Comes In The Morning, a co-write with Mitchell, are deeply soothing over sleepy tremolo waves, as he muses: “All hope is contagious”. Also namechecked is Sly Stone’s There’s A Riot Going On, and there are parallels to a great introspective record made at a time of similarly acute American turmoil. Still there’s light on the horizon as he urges “People get ready, there’s a big ship coming”, among several nods on Quietly Blowing It to Curtis Mayfield. “It’s cradle to the grave, so be good to each other,” Taylor encourages his flock in the opening bars of Hardlytown, before wrestling with the notion that what you get out of life might not match what you put in. Hope continues to shine forth from these gentle, spiritual compositions. It all fades away to the lonely sound of cicadas buzzing in the sultry night air. Warm blues phrases unwind with indolent grace from Miller’s guitar, abetted by Brevan Hampden’s decorative percussion and brushes kissing softly against snare skin. The title track is a majestic high point, faintly reminiscent of the equally radiant Cracked Windshield from Heart Like A Levee, as Taylor solemnly admires a “big pink sun over Hollywood”. The Great Mystifier is a soulful country shuffle nodding to the Allman Brothers, fluid lead guitar lines shrouded in phase winding joyously around a howling harmonica solo, Taylor espousing sagely “practise resurrection, take the blame, learn the lesson/ say you’re sorry, love ain’t a weapon”. ![]() The latter felt like a record forged from pain, and there’s plenty here too, as Taylor writes about work and class, grief, self-doubt, an America at war with itself and a looming climate emergency, yet always he seeks out the light. The album’s clement tone is familiar from 2016 career-high Heart Like A Levee and 2019’s Grammy-nominated Terms Of Surrender. It all ends in a cloud of oscillating delay. A gathering sax swell heralds a stirring ascent around the refrain “Up with the mountains, down with the system” before choice licks wrung from simmering valve amps join the party. From the unhurried C/F/G chord progression that introduces Way Back In The Way Back, we’re ushered into a world of tranquility, Taylor reassuring “don’t be afraid, we’ll be fine in the morning”.
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