Chuck Ragan is one of those lucky blokes who gets to have two careers. As it happens, I’ve seen him do both of them this year.
First, he played a set of his troubadour stuff, then a month or so later, Hot Water Music, the band he’s helmed for 30 years, performed a blistering set of punk.
And as much as I’d argue there’s not as much difference between the two things as you might think—after all, it’s pretty punk rock to get up there and do it in the raw—there’s one thing that binds both Chuck’s worlds together anyway, and it’s the fact that whatever he does, he means every damn word.
This is why the opening line of this album—which is sprinkled with a bit of Tex-Mex—”I’m edging away from apathy” is surely not right. He’s one of the least apathetic people you can imagine. And “All In” (like there’s any other way he’d do it) has that kind of road-worn, music-lifer feel.
“Love And Lore” is his first solo album in 10 years, and it feels more expansive than many of the others. “Wild In Our Ways” is more punk-infused, but it’s still Chuck solo and not Hot Water Music.
“Northern World” has the same feel as The White Buffalo perhaps, but “Echoes In The Halls” is different again; it comes with a melancholy shadow, which it casts as Ragan sings of “majestic glory.”
“Winter” is built around a hypnotic acoustic strum, “Aching Hour” brings the lap steel that he had on stage with him back in the spring, and consequently, it can’t escape the idea that Americana bands all over would kill for this.
Ragan had said in the build-up to “Love And Lore” that “This album is simply another collection of reflections and stories, day-to-day life, and realizations that we all come into contact with at one time or another.” So you can only imagine what brought him to the sadness of “Waiting Out The Storm” (from where the words that give the album its title come).
The duet of “One More Shot” has a wonderfully classic feel and is a real highlight amongst many, and that feeling of it being steeped in the grand tradition of the craft rushes to the surface again on the solo “Reel My Heart.”
We shouldn’t be staggered, given how talented he is, at just how good Chuck Ragan is at this, yet even as a fan of both strands of his career, it always manages to surprise me just how accomplished he sounds on these albums.
“Hanging On” makes me wonder why I’ve shelled out £300 on Springsteen tickets for next year when this man was similarly born to run, or at least born to do this anyway.
And its closing guitar solo is of such skill that as a closing crescendo it is right up there.
Yet for all that he’ll always be best known as the singer in Hot Water Music, it is worth pointing out perhaps that Chuck Ragan played his first solo show 30 years ago, and this matters. As he says himself: “These songs are very much about therapy and finding peace and solace in nature, on the water, and with loved ones.”
As a shot at redemption, then, there aren’t many better.
Rating: 9/10
