Adios (Bloodshot, 2017)
Cory Branan
Reviewed by Brian Baker
On "Adios," Branan continues to stack his Nashville cocktail party with an impossibly eclectic array of influences and touchstones in the service of his literate and original songcraft. Fans shouldn't be concerned about the finality of the album's title; Branan has characterized "Adios" as his death record, but not necessarily in a literal sense, rather in the concept of the passage from one state of being into another and bidding a fond, and not so fond, farewell to the past, the present and even the future.
"Adios" leaps to life with "I Only Know," a gently careening Buddy Holly homage that, like its root influence, gets it done in 1:41 and features backing vocals from punk icons Laura Jane Grace (Against Me!) and Dave Hause (The Loved Ones). "Yeah, So What" and "Visiting Hours" mirror the angry young man stance of vintage Elvis Costello with roiling Farfisa and snarling lyrical accusations, "You Got Through" offers a drunken séance to raise the restless ghosts of Jennings and Zevon, and the guitar solos on the elegiac jazz-to-hard-rock "Cold Blue Morning" are an unlikely marriage of Mott the Hoople and Willie Nelson.
As usual, the appeal of "Adios" is Branan's masterful use of language and the surgical strike of the message conveyed with it (from the Van Morrisonesque "Imogene;" "We got to act on the embers, ash won't remember the way back to fire..."). Nowhere is that more evident than in the deceptively jaunty "Another Nightmare in America," a contemporary rewrite of the similarly titled and themed Los Lobos song where Branan looks through the eyes of a racist cop with a license to kill. "Adios" is the synthesis of everything Cory Branan does best, which is quite simply everything.
CDs by Cory Branan



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