album review: 'the horses and the hounds' by james mcmurtry

We don’t often get albums like this.

And when I say that I’m referring to a specific stripe of singer-songwriters that might as well be goddamn poets in their own right, even if they’ve made a point to say they haven’t touched proper verse in years. The writing is often the centerpiece for better or worse, and given the relative scarcity of releases, it winds up feeling like an event when new material drops. But even the event feels different - these are not acts that usually get the traditional hype cycle unless you’ve got the popular stature of a Bob Dylan, and given that they’re often older it can be an even slower burn online, so it’s more like the slow build of a great book that you need time to sit with. And it’s not just old, weathered folkies or Americana acts either - a lot of older rappers fall into this territory as well - but as someone who loves lyricism and writing first and foremost, I tend to have particular tastes in this territory, but this is the sort of stuff that always tends to notch spots on year-end lists for me; think about Bill Callahan or Terry Allan.

And I’ll admit when I heard about James McMurtry potentially dropping a new project this year, I was thrilled - the album was reportedly getting written and cut in 2019, but with delays courtesy of the pandemic we weren’t going to see a release for a while if he couldn’t tour properly. For those of you who don’t remember, Complicated Game was one of the best albums of 2015 and his song ‘Long Island Sound’ was my favourite song of that year, and while I have nitpicks with the project in terms of pacing and just how bleak it can get, it wasn’t going to cut down on my excitement with this one, especially with the buzz suggesting it was actually more upbeat and leaning towards rougher edges in southern rock, which McMurtry has proven he sell effectively. So even if this was just going to be something only I care about, I wanted to give this proper airtime and exposure, so what did we get from The Horses And The Hounds?

…well, this wound pretty interesting. I mean, the obvious statement is that this is a pretty fantastic singer-songwriter project from one of the most perennially underrated acts in the field that will wind up slept on by everyone, but for me it’s more about placing this project in context with McMurtry’s previous albums… and on that note, while I don’t think it’s got a song on the level of ‘Long Island Sound’ to put it completely over the top, I’d argue this is a more consistent, upbeat, and accessible project all the way through - ergo if you’re a little intimidated to pick up a James McMurtry album given his catalog and pedigree, I’d feel comfortable giving you this! In a way it reminds me of how Jason Isbell followed Something More Than Free with The Nashville Sound in terms of ratcheting up the tension and exposing more raw nerves, but McMurtry is his own cantankerous animal, and this became amazingly easy for me to revisit time and time again.

And here’s the thing: if I say, ‘yeah, James McMurtry making southern rock’, a fan might already have an idea what this’ll sound like - solidly warm blends of electric and acoustic guitar with the occasional solo that is never showy but always satisfying, good basslines, the occasional splash of organ and keyboards - but the devil is in the details with this one. For one, the pacing is markedly better than Complicated Game, which for all of its slow-burn, heavier moments could definitely drag in patches and make it a tough relisten. This time around McMurtry is writing faster, rougher, burlier material, fewer moments of mature slow burn melancholy and bringing more tension to bear in the guitarlines - hell, I’d argue the opening and closing tracks are probably the most sedate on the album and even they keep a decent clip. But in going in this direction he doesn’t sacrifice the refinement of these compositions - the melodic interplay is terrific, especially in driving recognizable tunes and motifs, the basslines are consistently great and well-balanced, there’s even some touches of atmospherics to flesh out some depth and augment the organ, piano, and touches of cello and accordion. No, the album doesn’t take as many risks in its compositions as Complicated Game in terms of tonal selection or out-there pivots - one criticism I can see being made is that it can feel pretty uniform if you’re not paying attention to the details in the writing - but when it’s so uniformly great with sticky hooks and rarely a misstep, I’m not complaining. I love the slightly rougher edges in the vocal pickup and riff alongside a mostly major key song in ‘Operation Never Mind’ to sell that buried tension, I love how ‘Jackie’ uses sleigh bells in a more desolated mix to sell the painstaking balance living on the edge, accentuated by the quiet romance in the strings, I love the smolder behind ‘Ft. Walton Wake-Up Call’ and how the jangling interplay of ‘What’s The Matter’ nails gentle exasperation. And I really like how McMurtry sells the midtempo opener and closer where’s there’s enough space to capture the words against the sandy percussion, or how intentionally jarring the brighter vibe of ‘Decent Man’ is, given that it’s a murder ballad! That said, I do have two nitpicks here, the first being some of the Spanish touches on ‘Vaquero’ - you see this from a lot of Texas singer-songwriters and I don’t deny the kinship McMurtry might feel, but even with the accordion it feels a bit more awkward than it should. What I did find distracting was some of the female backing vocals, especially on the title track - they’re not quite as well-blended as his lead, and while they make sense in southern rock, they can be a bit thin and otherwise distracting.

But again, minor complaints: we’re here to talk about songwriting and lyricism… and where McMurtry is of little help, as the most of what he adds in interviews tends to dance around themes or even his method of writing, outside of emphasizing the fiction of these stories and pushing back against extrapolating further. And indeed, McMurtry is a pretty damn solid writer - just in terms of poetic meter and a naturalistic flow along with all the description to flesh out the pictures, he’s one of the best working, bringing a level of idiosyncratic but human detail that both grounds his stories, but also lends them texture, especially given so many characters left on the brink. I’d also caution about calling this album more political, especially as some of McMurtry’s most famous songs are in that lane like ‘We Can’t Make It Here Anymore’ - his left-leaning side is more present in side details and passing lines rather than direct targets, like on ‘Ft. Walton Wake-Up Call’ where his character is annoyed it’s just ‘Fox News fictions’ playing and he wonders without the Mexicans how they’d build the wall anyway, but in the context of the song it’s more about how the game he’s betting on isn’t on TV, another in the pileup of little annoyances that pester him; incidentally, his borderline rapping cadence on the song is legit excellent, especially in its primary line on the hook. The most targeted song is probably ‘Operation Never Mind’, writing from the perspectives of soldiers at war and veterans at home, ignored and consistently neglected in poverty until the government wants to put them on stage at ball games for recruitment, not really caring to broadcast the truth when they can’t wring entertainment out of it, and when the masses would rather watch TV and play Black Ops. And you can tell how righteously pissed he is about this, but it’s not a song that shows it openly - the tension is buried beneath the surface, the problems are choked back, and there’s a quiet, tired desperation that frames some stark moments on this project. I brought up ‘Decent Man’ earlier and I want to highlight how plainly McMurtry sketches the scene of a failed farmer who for no good reason gets up one day, leaves his family behind, and shoots his more successful friend - you’d almost expect it to be played for comedy except it’s not, letting the utter irrationality of his actions hang and gives you enough bright melody to dare you to sympathize with someone pushed to the brink, it feels just that real.

And it’s that very human release of tension that flies in the face of reason that gives this album its power to me - 2021 has seen a decent number of projects that drill into that emotionality, even going for sweeping anthems in the face of the world opening back up, but McMurtry’s framing is more complex than that, mostly because this was all written before the pandemic and there’s other factors that go beyond pure autobiography. One continuing theme folks have highlighted following Complicated Game is getting older, seeing time push McMurtry’s characters further to the brink, but that’s not consistently true here, because where the last album used the passage of time to feel more settled, this is one that yanks that stability from its characters… if they ever had it to begin with. That’s one reason I drew a parallel to The Nashville Sound, but where that was explicitly autobiographical, McMurtry is casting his gaze broader - I love the long-overdue connection of ‘Canola Fields’, where he ponders an old friend where there may have been a torch but at this point in their lives, why not see what’s there, and we see a similar relationship show up in the details of ‘Jackie’, telling the story of a rancher and long-haul trucker struggling to get by in early winter, where she’s lived too long to expect a faithful romance and is just trying to tough it out and see that her horses survive… only for her to die tragically in an accident because sometimes life will just punish you even more for no good reason.

So yeah, some of the bleakness of Complicated Game is absolutely back, but the lack of bigger answers doesn’t crush the album so much as feel like impetus to try and savor more, which materializes the most in the quasi-touring songs ‘If It Don’t Bleed’ and ‘What’s The Matter’. The latter takes more of a harried, exasperated tone in trying to balance a family with life on the road, but it’s the former that feels more revealing of the ethos: he’s not seeking salvation, he’s found a routine that’s probably not healthy but it works for him, and so long as it bleeds, where it’s tactile and real, he’ll stick to it. It’s one reason I don’t quite love the road warrior posturing of the title track, or the plays to more abstract scenes in ‘Vaquero’ - neither feel quite as potent as they could - but why I absolutely love the closer of the album ‘Blackberry Winter’, which seems to speak to someone who has seen their children leave and is now openly questioning their purpose in a bleak, cold, unpredictable world. I like that it’s left ambiguous whether McMurtry is a partner, an ex, or a friend, I like how he adds the detail how without a purpose this person has never learned to just live - way too common in our world - and how it deeply terrifies her… and if he can fill a role of any kind, it’d just be to tell her ‘no’ - not a ‘saving people thing’ so much as a boundary to reassure her life still has value, and when the song ends and she’s taken off, he at least hopes that she’ll find something on the next steps of her life’s journey. It’s the pull away from pure bleakness that still values life, even if he’s not a part of it, which is that added level of lived maturity that I’ve always liked from James McMurtry, and it’s one huge reason his albums age so well.

So to tie this all together… look, James McMurtry is one of the very best at taking a sure hand to capture messy reality, and if that means it takes five plus years to get new albums, I’m fine with that, especially as this is one that has yet to wear out any welcome. Again, I would argue this is one of his most accessible and approachable albums to date - maybe a little more targeted at an older audience, to be sure, but these themes are painted with such detail and are so well-constructed that I’d argue any fan of this type of singer-songwriter material would have a field day. Ergo, light 9/10, the highest of my recommendations - again, this will be slept on by entirely too many, y’all will want to give it a lot of listens, check it out.