Adam Amram Family Band

With the Family Band in tow, Amram picks up a tradition of slouched country charms, sauntering his way through the songs on To The End with a sly smirk. Every note has a rumpled rakishness to it, a kind of shaggy sheepdog aura that belies the album’s sharp songwriting and stacked bench of collaborators. Even with it’s eyes towards the cool of the Canyon, and more than a few lyrical odes to the open skies, the record has the soul of a city boy beaten into its seams. Like more than a few concrete cowboys before him, Amram makes his lived in lament feel universal. Crumbling like cigarette ash under the porch lights, the songs on To The End dress his croaked countenance in the kind of hubris and humor that’s seen passed from Dylan to Vile.

There are a lotta roads one might take to Amram, having grown up in a musical family. His father’s a known Composter with a rather impressive resume, but I’d come to him on a comp from Sacred Bones a few years back that paid tribute to the late Tres Warren, who’s own slip through urban country feels like part of the blueprint here. The record wanders the streets alone at night, offering up the kind of cadence that’ll carry you home when the busses get scarce and the subways are too stifling to wait the better part of an hour. With a few honeyed harmonies, some liquor laced steel from DeLorme, and loping rhythms, the record is the kind that’s never an unwelcome specter on the speakers.

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