“Lead On, Kindly Light” / “This World & One More” (Double Album)
Bill Mallonee
billmalloneemusic.com

Reviewed By Brian Quincy Newcomb

At this point, it’s nearly impossible to speak of any one album from singer/songwriter Bill Mallonee in isolation. His website lists 86 separate titles available for digital download all created over the course of his 30+ year career, some dating back to his first decade as leader and creative force behind the band, Vigilantes of Love. Growing in the shadows of R.E.M. in Athens, GA, Mallonee’s band got early nods from critics for Killing Floor (’92), which benefitted from having R.E.M.’s Peter Buck and the late Mark Heard serving up production, earning VoL an invitation to perform at the Cornerstone Festival. But Mallonee was never an easy fit in the Christian-oriented music marketplace, although VoL’s Audible Sigh was released by True Tunes prior to its mainstream release on Compass Records, and the band shared a co-billed “Double Cure” tour with another band on the fringes of the Christian marketplace, Over the Rhine.

Nearly three decades later, Mallonee continues to wear his heart and mind on his sleeve, pouring his colorful inner life into songs that take seriously the vagaries of everyday life while weaving together narratives that seek an ultimate meaning and purpose for all we do to survive on this small rotating blue globe. On his latest double disc, Lead On, Kindly Light and This World & One More, Mallonee takes in the views from the high desert of New Mexico, as well as the larger world, filled with beauty and anxiety that invades even the most desolate locations in this ever-connected inter-webbed world.

As necessity continues to spawn invention, Mallonee has refined and adapted his approach over his long and well documented career as a singer/songwriter. Responding to the ever-changing music business world as he went, has meant going solo when it became too expensive for him to continue on as a band, and creating the experience of a full band in the studio even if he had to play all the instruments himself. On Lead On… / This World, we hear the culmination of years of experience balancing the artistic passion of his earliest days and the maturing pragmatism of an elder statesman. He sings about it directly in “Old Cow-Puncher.” “This land is littered with heart-break & blues / No one knows quite like you… This is what happens when you answer the call / with a guitar & a suitcase full of cowboy songs / It’ll take your whole life long.”

In “Rev. Casey,” which celebrates a preacher with “insights into things like God & Man & Grace,” Mallonee sings that “There are three things that I know that are good for the soul / One is Jesus & the other two are reverb & tremolo / One makes you clean and one will make you whole.”

Back in those VoL days, Mallonee’s mix of influences – from the folk of Bob Dylan and Woody Gutherie to classic rock and the immediacy and energy of punk – produced edgier, alternative rock. His melodies often seemed to race to fit in all the syllables of a single phrase. More recently he has settled into more of a groove-based Americana sound, with obvious connections to all that has gone before. Here, alone with his own musical ideas in the high country, Mallonee is less rushed; more at ease and confident. Since 2011’s The Power & The Glory, his songwriting balances a folk singer’s commitment to storytelling and poetic language with a desire to create music that leaves a mark, a melody or guitar riff that hangs in your memory and brings you back again and again. Mallonee’s growth as a musician in the last decade has focused on improving his ability to create a full band sound while playing each instrument individually in the recording process, something that has come together with strong results on 2017’s The Rags of Absence and last year’s Forest Full of Wolves.

Lead On… feels familiar in that regard, like a continuation of his present creative journey. On the opening track, “The Candle’s Always Burning Down (From Both Ends),” the jangly guitars and folk pop harmony vocals take what could have been a lament and turn it into a joyful invitation:  “There’s a party tonight with a fella I’m told / He turns water to wine and hearts to gold.” There’s more great pop melodies at the heart of “Agua Es La Vida,” while stalwart rockers like “Broken Arrow” and the blues-leaning “Albeit Of a Different Kind,” (which features some excellent harmonica playing by Mallonee,) are more common. The longer songs clock in between 4 and a half and six minutes and leave lots of time for Mallonee to display his improved skills on electric guitar, often bouncing off the lines he’s played on lap steel. (And importantly, there’s lots of room for reverb and tremolo.)

Lead On Kindly Light is another solid effort from Mallonee, a noteworthy addition to his already impressive, and exhaustive catalog. If that was all he gave us here at the beginning of 2020, surely that would be more than enough. But, he takes it up a notch on the second disc, This World & One More, where the songs are richer, fuller, more groove oriented, the solos more expressive. The tone and flavor remains familiar, of course. The country-leaning “Baby, It’s A World Of Hurt (Seen Through a Veil of Tears),” is a celebration of intertwined guitars with a spunky bass line that goes against the very grain of the grieving lyric. There’s even a Beatlesque “yeah, yeah, yeah” added in for good measure. It may seem counter-intuitive to sing such a sad song in such a bright, up-tempo way, but that’s the song’s subversive genius. The hook turns this lament into a party anthem and acts like sugar to its medicine; we sing along, while refusing to pretend that life is any easier than we all know it to be.

“Shake Down” is another particularly bright spot on an album that sees life’s hurts for what they are: “Everything is broken… everyone I know carries a heavy heart.” But the music refuses to relent. There’s a snap and a crispness in the guitars, the harmony vocals, and the steady beat of the drum. The whole thing suggests hope and promise through a sound that is rich with possibility. If it’s a given that life is hard, we find comfort then in the “Love that is left you; the path that gets you home,” (“A Borrowing of Bones.”) We may have to “walk it lonely” from time to time, because “there are no guarantees,” but Mallonee has “Travelin’ Advices”: “Never be ashamed to get down on your knees / Don’t let that brutish world steal your faith,” and “Through every losing streak you gotta learn to preach that sermon about Mercy to yourself.”

So, on this journey through this life, we’re always looking for companions. Maybe it’s a “Place Off the Highway.” Whether it’s a gathering of a family of the Saints or a friendly tavern where everyone knows your name, “Where everyone can be saved.” Or maybe it’s that one friend or lover who will always be there, waiting when you come “Crawling Back to You.” Either way, we’ve got This World & One More, so Lead On, Kindly Light. Bill Mallonee and his “studio band” (which does include some lovely backing vocals by his wife and compatriot Muriah Rose,) gives us one more soundtrack that will carry us through to where we need to be.

Order at www.BillMalloneeMusic.com