David Nance

A staple around the site, David Nance is back and brimming with life on his debut for Third Man Records. The Omaha artist certainly deserves a bump up to bigger things as he’s been churning out lost classics in the indie rock outfield for years now, including an impeccable run at RSTB faves Trouble In Mind. Nance is known almost as much for his string of short-run covers albums as much as he is his own records, but what’s always been endearing about his solo works is how he seamlessly digests his influences and obsessions, leaving just a tip-of-the-tongue familiarity in his scuzz-sopped blues. From JJ to Burnside, there’s something boiling under the backseat of Nance’s songs and it all seems to come to a head on his latest with the assembled Mowed Sound.

His voice is still sometimes cloaked in the transistor static that’s been a trademark, but the menagerie assembled on Mowed sounds crisp, letting his lo-fi licks get a new coat of gloss for the Nashville powerhouse label. The album leaps out of the gate with the hungry and huge “Mock The Hours,” but quickly settles into Nance’s worn-pocket pulse on the loungy “Side Eyed Sam” and its twin turndown “No Taste Too Tart.” Quite a few moments bring new light, though, like the campfire croon of “Tumbleweed” which finds Nance reconnecting with Pearl Lovejoy Boyd, who has haunted a few tapes in the past, and gets a proper version of their duet here. Nance embraces a Bo Diddley itch on “Cut It Off,” which brings some of the shuffling rhythms to the forefront that have been fevered undercurrents in the past. He perfects the patter on the standout “Credit Line,” which turns the blues turbine even further and pairs the glossed aesthetics with a cut that’s been explored in the past in murkier terms.

The song first cropped up on the limited rework, Pulverized and Slightly Peaced and returned on Ash Wednesday, but here it shines like a polished stone dagger — glossy but still just as dangerous as ever. In fact, that private press tape, Ash Wednesday, rears its head quite a bit on And Mowed Sound, acting as the calm country counterpoint to this record. It’s like a hazy shadow, trailing back to where the songs came from — required reading to fully understand the size of the new record. It’s been a good year for indie favorites getting their due and I’m glad Nance is among the ranks of those being raised. Even with a deep back catalog already brewing, this feels like the start of a new era for Nance.