Zachary Cale

Two albums on the site today that were born out of the last days of Black Dirt Studio, gotta love that. Cale’s latest album was recorded with Jason Meagher, a pivot from his formerly solo-focused works. This time he assembled a seasoned studio crew, built from touring companions, already used to the interplay they’d developed on stage. Skywriting is rumpled and lived in as a result. It is an album marked by the road wear scars of days spent driving and nights spent searching out stage after stage. Shades of Dylan’s Infidels, or contemporaries The War On Drugs, Steve Gunn, and Phosphorescent color the corners of Skywriting, but Cale’s carving out his own melancholy travelers’ path.

With a slight whisky rasp, Cale lays out motel loneliness, Highway hypnosis, solitary meditations, dark secrets, and darker nights. The full band swells his sound — cool water pianos and guitars that slide across the soul with a plush velvet touch. There’s a tension between emotional turbulence and weathered acceptance. It’s a record coming to terms with itself and what it wants out of life — one toe in gig jobs, one toe in a touring life. Cale runs the tightrope well, providing solace and sanction at once, crafting one of his most nuanced albums yet.

Support the artist. Buy it HERE.