Released late last year, Here Comes the Winter completes the two-part cycle that Devil Blare began earlier in '08 with the release of his debut solo record, The Journeyman. The devil's quest: Write two albums' worth of songs that get deep into everyday life, playing most of the instruments himself and making the recordings sound like lost, lo-fi, psychedelic-era gems. On Journeyman, Blare (Devin Blair, Kansas City music veteran and high-school English teacher), conveyed workingman struggles through ripped-speaker, Nuggets-style rockers and psilocybin-fueled larks. Like a comedown off a mellow high, Winter's ballads are more lightly crafted and melodic, standing somewhere between the Kinks' "Waterloo Sunset" and recent Wilco. For his subject matter this time around, Blare attempts to focus on the communal rather than the personal. An ex-military man in real life, he claims to have taken inspiration for the album from his grandmother's stories of life before and after World War II. And when he sings on the opening track, amid a swirl of acoustic guitars and accordion, We won the war but we lost our way, you believe him.
As a would-be Thornton Wilder, Blare seems to lose his own way a few tracks into Winter, returning his attention to personal relationships, often of the broken type. "Hey Lucy" is a plea to be taken back. "The Public Agreement" is about getting a divorce. "I Made My Bed" is a humorous sketch about the readjustment to single life after a breakup. But regardless of what the songs purport to be about, Blair's musicality, both vocal and instrumental, is so sweet and catchy that you can't help wondering what these songs would sound like played by a full band, in a top-dollar studio, unencumbered by the lo-fi aesthetic. But as with Journeyman before it, learning to enjoy Winter despite its sonic limitations — and, eventually, because of them — is what makes the trip worth taking.
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