Rykodisc
2008
Vagabonds
About This Album
As guitarist and frequent songwriter with the Jayhawks, Gary Louris was on hand from the group's atmospheric country-influenced early recordings to their later grand-scale pop productions, so it shouldn't be much of a surprise that Louris' first solo album should embrace both ends of this musical spectrum. Vagabonds manages to sound grand and organic at once, with the arrangements and production capturing a sense of the wide open spaces of Hollywood Town Hall and Rainy Day Music, especially on the beautifully heart-tugging "She Only Calls Me on Sundays," while also encompassing the more ambitious melodic conceits of Smile and Sound of Lies on tracks like "Black Grass" and "Omaha Nights." There's also quite a bit of stylistic cross-talk between these two poles, and Louris' lyrics reach for a more personal and philosophical tone than he's offered in the past. There's a poignant search for answers in "Omaha Nights" and a longing for the solace of love in "To Die a Happy Man" that digs deeper into the psyche than he's been willing to go in the past, and even simpler compositions such as "We'll Get By" and "I Wanna Get High" reveal a new level of maturity and a willingness to experiment.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6 and 7)

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