After Zach Bryan, Drayton Farley is arguably the next consensus high-flyer from the wider Americana and Country catchment area. You have to think constantly during Twenty On High however to someone else.
Produced by 400 Unit-Musicians Sadler Vaden and (besides the Thirty Tigers as a backing band also with other top-class guests such as fiddler Kristin Weber, Peter Levin and Katie Crutchfield) their bassist Jimbo Hart and drummer Chad Gamble, it is actually impossible to listen to this second studio album without permanent associations to Jason Isobel, who aesthetically, in terms of content and – most importantly! – fortunately also qualitatively unmistakably ubiquitous godfather for the sound and the songwriting of Farley.
The acoustic paths of his first career years around the debut A Hard Up Life do not degrade (…) to a relative warm-up exercise, because Twenty On High at least on the last few meters with the more economical gem All My Yesterdays Have as an intimate reduction (and a search for perspectives, where future prospects actually remain ambivalent for the time being) actually returns to this orientation.
Apart from the early catchy tune, which, due to the directness of its crisp rockiness, almost falls a little bit out of the enormously homogeneous (and with 37 minutes total playing time also nicely compact album frame) framework, but at least has fueled false expectations Norfolk Blues In the emotionally relaxed Americana, however, Farley surrenders above all to the carefully arranged, wistfully unobtrusive composure of melancholy, varies the restrained tempo and the always down-to-earth, modest dynamics in her graceful melody only to a limited extent – sometimes supple and gently unwillingly accentuated as in the longing for the Simplicity of bygone days of the opener Stop the Clocklaid out calmly and relaxed on a soulful organ carpet Wasted Youth or the downright pleasant title track; sometimes a little quicker than in the soft flow of the finale carried by his piano into the starry sky Above My Head or the one casually strumming with a guitar sawing on the saxophone in the background Something Wrong (Inside My Head).
Devil’s in Nola almost funky with wah wah pedal and strings allows for a vague foreboding of Sturgill and the uplifting drama of How to Feel Again is even adaptable for a wide stadium audience before The Alabama Moon as a sentimental epilogue following the fireworks, it is symptomatic of the record’s fine arc of suspense, but is also a little too corny.
While Farley (understandably) often quarrels with love and the world of work away from the music, he always remains a bit too harmless anyway and doesn’t hurt anyone, although a production latently less inclined towards potential pop and alternative probably has more edge and character at the roots of the compositions would have given. But good: the hardly original Twenty On High may not be a subtle nod, but it has enough substance anyway to handle even those phases of the record, which some purists will declare as downright imitations, with an all-round convincing, entertaining and profound class.
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