Slaid Cleaves’s biography is short and pithy: “Grew up in Maine. Lives in Texas. Writes songs. Makes records. Travels around. Tries to be good.”
His work, however, is more expressive. This is his first album since the excellent Still Fighting the War in 2013 and once again he hits all the right notes in these understated, instantly likeable everyday tales of life on the margins where people are all "scrapping for the dough-re-mi" (Take Home Pay), where big business rules (Little Guys), where time is running out (Junkyard, Already Gone), old age is calling (The Old Guard, If I Had a Heart) and where the world is going to hell in a handbasket (Drunken Barbers' Hand).
Cleaves crafts these 12 stories with care and compassion; some might describe his characters as losers but he gives them dignity and voice and a bunch of great folk-rock tunes to boot.
