Kiefer Sutherland delivers the latest in a sequence of high-quality album releases.
Everyone knows Kiefer Sutherland, right? He’s that big-name actor, a member of Hollywood royalty and part of the Brat Pack in the 1980s; he has appeared in numerous movies, but his most celebrated role was that of Jack Bauer in the TV series 24, which ran for eight seasons between 2001 and 2010 and then returned for a ninth season, 24: Live Another Day in 2014. Sutherland won numerous awards for his role in 24, including an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series in 2006, and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor: Television Series, Drama (2002). He has also been inducted into both the Hollywood Walk of Fame and Canada’s Walk of Fame.
Except he’s far more than simply an actor; he has also worked as a director and producer, and co-founded (with musician Jude Cole) an independent record label, Ironworks Music, with studio facilities near Los Angeles. Artists with albums released by the label include Rocco DeLuca & The Burden and Ron Sexsmith. It appears that Ironworks Music is no longer operating.
That’s not all, though, as he is co-founder of Canadian Red Bank Whisky. Oh, and he’s a singer-songwriter who has recently completed a 30-plus-date European tour and a new album release (his fourth). The album releases stretching from Down in a Hole in 2016, through the excellent Reckless & Me (2019), 2022’s Bloor Street, and now Grey. In truth, Sutherland’s music career extends far beyond his album releases, with the artist having played gigs over a 14-year period.
Grey sees Sutherland using three different producers across its 10 tracks: big-name Ethan Johns (Laura Marling, Ryan Adams, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Tom Jones, Paul McCartney, Kings of Leon and Kaiser Chiefs), DeLuca and Mark Neill. Of the 10 songs on Grey, Sutherland penned nine of them, the outlier being a cover of an iconic song. Sutherland comments, “The songs were written and recorded over a two-year period from 2024 to 2026. In many ways these songs mark a growth for me personally, as I wrote less about observations and more about personal feelings that I have been navigating in my own life.”
The record’s release was preceded by the singles Simpler Time and Goodbye California, giving listeners a taster of what was to come.
Listening to the LP, it starts strongly with Come Back Down, and it’s a good choice to open proceedings. In common with a number of tracks, there is some nice slide guitar playing, while lyrically, there’s a sense of being let down: “Ain’t it scary how life burns you, Makes your skin melt away, She promises to never hurt you, Then hurts you every single day.” But it sounds like we’re getting to the point of being ready to move on: “You know it doesn’t even matter, Why you no longer come around, Cause I’m just waiting on an old friend, To help me come back down.”
American Farmer is a little more uptempo, and again has neat guitar work, underpinned by keyboards. The subject is the struggle to keep up to the challenge of maintaining a farm that has been in the family for generations. “I’m tired of being tired of being tired, Of being worked to the bone, I’m tired of being tired, Of this savings and loan, I’m tired of being tired, Of being tired of feeling so old, I’m feeling so old.” Sutherland says that “Goodbye California is a fond farewell to a place that made a young man’s dreams come true.” It’s a song that’s driven by a persistent, jangly guitar line and has a catchy chorus.
While Simpler Time, according to Sutherland, “is a reflection on my youth and the memory of a time that felt more reliable culturally, socially and politically. I am aware that the memory of one’s youth is often seen through rose-tinted glasses, but in this instance, personally, I don’t think so.” Again, it’s an uptempo track with a prominent line played on what sounds like a mandolin; it’s one of the standouts on the album. Cruel World is a powerful song about taking one’s own life; lyrically, it’s quite simple, that gets its message across strongly. Down Below is another of the standout cuts here; atmospheric and brooding.
The cover version on the LP is The Bottle Let Me Down, the Merle Haggard classic from 1966. This is a song that has been covered so many times over the years, by artists such as Porter Wagoner, Ernest Tubb, Emmylou Harris, George Jones, The Mavericks, The Flying Burrito Brothers, Waylon Jennings and Elvis Costello. Of course, it’s a great song, and Sutherland’s version, featuring a passionate vocal performance, is a pretty good one. The album concludes with Rage in Me, which has a gospel feel to it; it’s a fitting end to the record and will probably go down a storm at live shows.
Grey is a really good record, fitting nicely into the americana genre. The songs are good, the arrangements and the playing are great, and the more you listen to it, the more it endears itself to you.
