A fresh spin on some classic influences makes for a cohesive and memorable listen.
“Pushing forty on thirty-five / Out of smokes and the tank is dry / This town has changed but so have I believe me,” opens Northeastern native Greg Loftus on ‘I Don’t Want to Die in San Antone’, the first track on his fourth studio album “No Kings in the Wild”, his voice raw and gruff with time in the way only someone who has spent time toiling in the music industry can achieve. “Wish I may wish I might / Wish on a satellite,” he closes, but it’s as he sings the final line, “No I don’t want to die in San Antone”, and his voice cracks in desperation as he reaches for a high note that’s just out of his range, but nonetheless needed to convey his emotion, that you realise you’re in for something special.
Featuring some epic guitar riffs reminiscent of classic 70s Southern rock, ‘Angelica’ is a tale about how Loftus will always return from the road to the titular he loves (“I’ll pull this highway up my Angelica / Because you’re the one that I am driving to / And this road can’t be my home without you”), while on the bluesy ‘Miss Marigold’ his thoughts turn to the one that got away (“I watched the sun come up and thought of you all night / Past the top shelf I can see myself / You’re a long gone siren and I look like hell”).
With echoes of Bob Dylan in his voice, on the acoustic ‘Seven Sisters’ Loftus tells of a girl hoping to find more than what life has offered her, and it closes with some of the most beautiful lyrics of the album: “The last of seven sisters and the first to dream / Headstones line the hillside like a mouth of broken teeth / Just a ghost in a jon boat rowing upstream / Waiting on the tide to come along.” ‘Green River Revival’ is Loftus’s nod to Creedence Clearwater Revival, and their influence is plain to see with a real fire running through the whole song as he longs to go back to the old days of rock ‘n’ roll.
“I was raised by man and ran with wolves / Ravaged hunted and howled / Tore through the timber and hid from my home / There ain’t no kings in the wild,” growls Loftus on the title track, a reminder to make the most of your time on earth and to appreciate the less glamorous aspects of life. The moving ‘Castaways and Washashores’ is about the struggles and inability to escape small town life, and it features some truly impactful lyrics, in spite of their apparent simplicity: “One thing I know for sure no one gets out alive / Are you somebody’s baby, are you somebody’s wife?”
On ‘The Day I Walk Away’, Loftus sets out a few things he would like to do or achieve in his life, including wanting to throw his phone “in the fucking ocean”, “build something big”, and “work through every book [he] should’ve read”; but it’s one thing in particular that will stand out to the ear of any Americana fan, the fact he wants to “worship at the altar of Saint Prine”. It’s true, there is a lot of the late, great John Prine’s influence to be felt here, but Loftus still manages to make the album his own and indeed, a worthy collection of songs to follow in the footsteps of the one he venerates.
