Authenticity in pop music. It's a divisive issue isn't it? A sense of entitlement to a certain selection of musical ideas and combinations should be a nonsense: why should somebody be more entitled to the form or content of a musical idea than somebody else. Nevertheless even an open minded feller like myself can secretly balk at Stings musical transvetisim or every seventies rock bands attempts to
do reggae.
And heritage is something that is clearly very important to Dylan LeBlanc. Every note on "Paupers Field" follows on from Mason-Dixie ley line. There is a lot of steel pedal here. A lot of lost and lonely keening. Songs called "The Death of Outlaw Billy John" and "Coyote Creek". Even the sleeve, a sepia tinted shack by a dirt farm about to be devoured by looming trees, looks like a still from The Waltons. Albeit a degenerate, "Deliverancy" Waltons wearing nipple-belts and toting chain-saws. The abundant bumf that accompanies the CD is keen to place Dylan in a long musical tradition. Dylan "grew up around a lot of session players" and "for me music is about getting together with a group of people who feel like family."
Dylan LeBlanc is twenty years old!
It's hard to remember that fact when you listen to this record. If opener "Low" represents the more upbeat side to the record as it just about struggles into a canter, in the main the songs drag by, slowed down by the sheer weight of seasoned session pros. This is a beautifully immaculately played record but the pace barely changes, the songs bleed into one tastefully conceived hour long country tune: where does "If The Creek Don't Rise" end and "Tuesday Night Rain" begin - around the three minute mark I'd guess, though that's the only clue I'm giving you. There are no break-away pop-hits here. I suspect Dylan would think they were in bad taste.
The other thing that makes it so difficult to believe this is a first time record by a twenty year old is Dylan LeBlancs extraordinary voice. Low and with a honeyed-huskiness, and that mewling timbre that makes your throat tighten and puts a tear in your beer everytime you hear it. It's an astonishing thing and seems to grow in stature and command as the album progresses. "Coyote Creek" is beautifully realised and on "No Kind of Forgiveness" he sounds as old as time, or Walton mountain, his voice rootless and detached. It's fantastic.
He's talented and tall and good looking. Somebody write him a classic song. He'll make you rich.
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