album review: 'drink the river' by gabe lee

This is going to seem a bit strange to describe, but here it goes: for as simple as his formula might seem within indie country, I’d argue it’s actually a little difficult to describe what Gabe Lee does so goddamn well.

Now I got onboard with Honky Tonk Hell in 2020, and initially I thought the reason I loved the album so much was because it was a breather, a respite, a road story with a rakish troubadour that had so much natural charisma that it made him incredibly easy to like despite some morally dubious behaviour. That created adventure and wit and good-natured humour, that when paired with some of the warmest, most textured instrumentation and production really seemed to amplify having a good time; a little old-fashioned in certain places, perhaps, but never overplayed, old Hollywood charm tastefully updated where it never felt like a throwback or affectation, just the way he is. It’s a performance but that comes through subtle amplification rather than playing up a character - the songs felt lived in, and that made some of the romantic gutpunch moments hit like a ton of bricks.

Now I want to stress that while I was cooler on his album The Hometown Kid last year, it was still excellent, one of my top 50 of 2022 - the embrace of more sweeping Americana textures was perhaps a little windswept and chillier, but the commitment to small details and that same charm really came through, even if I was missing some of that wandering spirit as you could tell he felt more settled in a place. That said, the buzz was suggesting that there was already another project waiting in the wings for a quick turnaround time, and sure enough we have Drink The River now - reportedly it was going to lean more acoustic with nine songs - one a rerecording from Gabe Lee’s first album farmland, and one a long-buried Lynyrd Skynyrd deepcut - and run lean at around thirty-five minutes. And I had expectations: Gabe Lee has not released anything I would call less than great, and that sets a high bar for an artist… so what did we get from Drink The River?

…well goddamn it, he did it again - I knew from the first few listens Gabe Lee had once again made one of the best albums of the year, and every repeat listen confirmed it with perhaps his most warm and melodically inviting album to date, embracing more neotraditional tones for a rollicking great time that still manages to find moments to rip your heart out, so unbelievably consistent that it’s hard to pinpoint flaws! If you’re a fan of any stripe of country and hadn’t had Honky Tonk Hell on your radar, this is the one that might just win you over in spades, and given that I have a sneaking suspicion that given his base in Nashville and steady groundswell he could be on the cusp of something bigger quite soon, you’ll want to get in on the ground floor now.

And again, what’s truly amazing is that the central formula hasn’t changed much at all: Gabe Lee still has that warm, inviting, natural charisma and low-key sense of humour - in that framing a lot of folks have drawn comparisons to John Prine, especially given his voice, but I’ve never fully bought that comparison; Prine’s homespun sincerity would often sneak up on you between the light-hearted humour, still powerful but there was a little more traditionalist showmanship, whereas Gabe Lee’s presence has always felt a little heavier, a bit more reserved and serious, where the levity is there and probably manifests close on the jokey closer ‘Property Line’, but it’s tempered and it feels more modern. Now part of this is Drink The River feeling a little more somber compared to how riotous Honky Tonk Hell is, and I do wish there was a bit more of that electric spark…

But that’s early nitpicking, and it ignores the big new addition to this album that won me over in spades: multi-tracking and vocal harmonies! Gabe Lee has used some of them before but it’s been very sparing, often for emphasis, where the blending isn’t quite as punchy as it could be; hell, that might have been what was missing to fully put The Hometown Kid over the top, come to think of it! But not only have the rougher edges in the vocal mastering have been polished up, right from the first track ‘The Wild’ the vocal layering sounds impeccable, not just the overdubs but also the gentle introduction of female vocals that flesh out and deepen that harmony - and when you consider how the plucky acoustic guitars, banjo, pedal steel, harmonica, and some truly terrific mandolin and fiddle slide in, it feels stridently neotraditional in the way old Alan Jackson songs can feel, impeccably balanced and endlessly likable. This is where I have to highlight Lee’s production team in Alex Torrez and David Dorn - an album otherwise so midtempo and understated needs vibrant production to accentuate good melodic tone or it’ll slip into the background or feel too much like a throwback, and both of these guys are working their ass off to ensure there’s a burnished richness to his sound and actual hooks and groove. It’s the reason I don’t mind with a more robust and layered sound that they rerecorded ‘Eveline’ while still preserving its spare plucky texture - and my god, that fiddle and bass sounds incredible - and just how well the cover of ‘All I Can Do It Is Write About It’ has that mid-70s southern rock feel especially with the harmonica. And there’s so many little notes - I love the subtle rollicking flourish at the end of ‘The Wild’, the interplay between the fiddle and acoustics on ‘Even Jesus Got The Blues’ is some of the best I’ve heard all year, how ‘Heart Don’t Break’ slides in the fiddle, ‘Drink The River’ feels Biblically inspired but not indebted to gospel, and the homespun but heartbreakingly spare ‘Merigold’ and ‘Lidocaine’ are phenomenal in the intimacy of their framing, the former feeling so haunted and the latter in its resigned but yearning prayer for understanding - both remind me of how effectively an singer-songwriter like Ian Noe will captivate an audience with such a spare accompaniment, and that’s high praise indeed.

So naturally with the sound being this restrained and acoustic, it’s designed to draw attention to lyrics and themes, so let’s dig in, and the first thing to highlight is that Gabe Lee is so damn great at painting an emotional scene with relatively few words that there’s always some ambiguity in his storytelling, but that’s not what I treasure most, and that comes with the empathy and framing of his work. A lot of this album circles themes of what we can and cannot control about our lives and world, and if Honky Tonk Hell had him taking a rambunctious balance to the road and The Hometown Kid felt more weary and settled, this album feels like exploring the costs of the calling. He still has that wildness, but now he’s found a love that he wants to preserve against his own impulses, and the grace and empathy he tries to give to everyone in the story is pretty admirable. To reference Ian Noe again, there can be a harsh brutality of the world in some of the scenes he paints, where for Gabe Lee the circumstances might be just as dire, but he wants to believe that for as many of us are caught in the shuffle, wonderment and hope can persist. That’s one reason I really like how he writes about religion and God - the third verse of ‘30 Seconds At A Time’ is still a masterwork, but ‘Even Jesus Got The Blues’ is a worthy second, telling the story of trying to help a hitchhiking addict and how her wildness might disturb or exasperate some in her wake as she cavorts across the sacred, he knows not to judge her; and hell, on ‘Merigold’ when he makes a prayer having already lost someone from cancer, his plea if it’s not too much trouble is to go with his love should it strike again. And I do like how he frames his struggle with women, mostly in despite his troublemaking ways, his framing is wide enough to hold himself accountable and that complex ambiguity - ‘Heart Don’t Break’ is a worthy companion to a song like Jason Eady’s ‘Daylight & Dark', and ‘Lidocaine’ is even more devastating, writing possibly from the perspective of someone with dementia or a writer skidding off the rails, and hoping just for a bit of grace in his own fuck-ups; they aren’t malicious or intentional.

…but they do happen, and that’s where I think where some of Gabe Lee’s choices that might appear questionable to a certain audience pick up more resonance. The re-recording of ‘Eveline’ is a prime example - showing the cost of being cavalier with love - and ‘Property Line’ shows him trying to get drunk and flirty only to get knocked on his ass by this girl’s ex-girlfriend… not what he was expecting in this city! Now this along with the Lynyrd Skynyrd cover has prompted a few observations that this album can trend a little conservative in its lionization of individual property and rural countrysides getting overpowered by cities that don’t reflect the same values, systems that he cannot change, and I think there’s some context missing to that larger conversation; this is not Jason Aldean and his newest godawful remake of ‘Flyover States’, which play on fears of degeneracy that Gabe Lee simply doesn’t have - he’s too realistic but optimistic as well - and more to the point, there are a lot of city types who still treat folks in his space and genre like simpletons and walking stereotypes, which is also just not true for Lee and many others, so the trepidation isn’t without weight. But again, this is where empathetic framing, a sense of tangible individual responsibility, paired with self-awareness that doesn’t make excuses for himself or avoids emotional numbness… that tends to go down a lot easier; old-fashioned, but not in a bad way.

So yeah, this is absolutely phenomenal - one of the best albums of 2023 by a tangible margin, so warm and inviting and melodic that even if you might be a tougher sell on this brand of stripped back, organic country I reckon you’ll find a lot to like. It reminds me of a great Alan Jackson album, there’s a surety to Gabe Lee’s poise and presence and emotional honesty that I really appreciate and you rarely see outside of this style of country. Indie country has been having a banner year, and an album like this deserves a special place in the conversation, at least before he gets his justly deserved break and the conversation gets much bigger. I’ve been singing his praises for a few years now - absolutely check this out!