An album of real musical power, emotional honesty and performed with sheer commitment.
On this follow up to introspective album “Strawberry Mansion” Langhorne Slim chooses to bear his soul through high energy rock and roll. Helping Slim on this journey is producer Sam Kiszka from Greta Van Fleet – and Danny Wagner also drums on the album. This feels like a perfect partnership.
Album opener, ‘Rock N Roll’ sets the tone. This is a song with great rhythm and starts with a pounding bass line. It is musically riotous but in a brilliantly controlled way. The music perfectly matches the lyrics too, which are defiant, recklessly joyful and existentially loose. “It’s like living on a boat out at sea / Some days you’re one with the breeze / And other days you get carried away” sings Slim making the statement, for this song and for the whole album, that life is about embracing instability. The boat may be small, we may be exposed but we should still choose to live loudly.
Slim has divided the album into two sides, which may be a nostalgic nod to earlier times but also suggests that the record is going to tell a story. The emotional heart of Side 1 might be the next song, ‘Dream Come True’. This is a hopeful, tender song of gentle conviction of a faith that survives doubt. The simple line, “Without a dream you can’t have a dream come true”, seems to reframe the idea of a dream, not as something to do with talent or luck, but as a shared belief that can sustain us. Musically, ‘Dream Come True’ continues with the energy of ‘Rock N Roll’ but there is also a great rhythm created vocally: voice and instrumentation seem to feed off each other.
‘Loyalty’, a gritty and resolute song, keeps the pace going with a multi-layered anthem about how hard-earned trust can be. This is seen in lyrics like “Nobody learns nothin’ easy” and “We’re only gonna make it honey if we try”. The message is clear: you don’t prove loyalty once, you prove it daily. ‘On Fire’ begins with a wonderful introduction from “Grandma May”, and here’s hoping that it really is Slim’s grandma. The song itself injects some infatuation into the album. It is exuberant, nervous and romantic: that electric moment before love becomes real work – “Her love’s so heavy / It makes me stagger”. Musically, the song is a bit more laid back but has a swagger to it. Again, the music is in great symbiosis with the feel of the words.
Two songs complete Side 1, ‘Stealin’ Time’ and ‘Rickety Ol’ Bridge’, and both deal with an emotional fall, an ending of the relationship that has been built up so far. The first is intimate, conflicted and aching, “How does a heart open / And then close again”, a line that Slim seems to cry as much as sing. This is the first major emotional fracture of the album and the music becomes thoughtful, acoustic, mournful, a weaving of Slim’s voice at his most vulnerable, guitar and violin. ‘Rickety Ol’ Bridge’ is a dark, powerful number, both lyrically and musically. The lyrics are wry and quietly fatalistic. “There’s a rickety ol’ bridge between heaven and hell”; and the music is country noir. Here is the turning point between chaos and reckoning.
Side 2 begins with ‘Strange Companion’. The emotional debris of the end of Side 1 is being blown away, this time accompanied by pure rock and roll, with guitar chords, jangly piano, great bass line and drums. The lyrics are detached, disillusioned and confrontational, “And I’m your strange companion / You seem so glad to have one / My way, my way / Your desperation is a soul sickness baby”. Follow-up ‘Possessive’ provides one of the album’s most mature moments, jealousy acknowledged without apology or denial. “Now don’t you worry about a boy like me / Well I don’t fuck around with honesty / So either love me, baby / Or set me free” turned into a singalong number. But maturity is followed by grief. ‘Lord’, which is appropriately prayer-like in its performance, is the aftermath of love. As with all grief there is pain: “I stumbled, and I fell”, desperate hope: “Still hoping you’d come protect me” and contradiction: “You’ve turned the world full of shit / Made it a little bit kinder”.
‘Haunted Man’, one of the album’s many highpoints, is both reflective and resilient. Musically, there are echoes of Jason Isbell, guitar-led but with some thoughtful quietness and harmonies in the background. Lyrically, while ghosts remain they are no longer in control – “And I’m tired of being a haunted man / But I keep on holdin’, holdin’ on”.
The final two songs on the album build on the endurance expressed in ‘Haunted Man’ and offer some peace. ‘Dance on Thru’ suggests that joy can be relearnt and can be an act of courage. Hope may be approached gently but it is present and has the anthemic line, “Give your heart a chance to dance on thru”. ‘Engine 99’ is a liberating, utopian ending which is musically uplifting. The drums even manage to sound like an engine. The closing vision can be seen in the words, “Please don’t despair / Just follow me there / It’s our choice / And we’re gonna take our time”.
“The Dreamin’ Kind” album traces a full arc from chaos, to commitment, to loss, to endurance, to chosen peace. It’s deeply human, never polished and grounded in the belief that how you live matters more than where you end up. This narrative is supported by a performance of real energy and complete commitment – a brilliant salve to any festive fug. It might be too early to make a claim for album of the year, it might not. “The Dreamin’ Kind” should be up there as a contender.
