Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band : New Threats From the Soul
Ryan Davis has said of his songwriting, “I keep it close to what I know,” a statement that seems potentially difficult to square with the colossal scope of the country-rock epics he performs with his group the Roadhouse Band. Take, for instance, the title track that opens Ryan Davis and the Roadhouse Band‘s sophomore album New Threats From the Soul, a nine-minute saga scored with pedal steel and horns, a big and lush Americana journey that’s gorgeous, charming and long-winded. He hoists the object of his affection on a basic cable pedestal (“my little Jessica Rabbit, my Betty Rubble, my Moki Cherry, my Peggy Bundy, my Helen of Troy“) and is losing a low-stakes war with himself, or as he puts it, “a pissing competition between the man I am and the guy I was.” It’s fantastic, both definitions of the word being applicable here, but at its foundation, it’s a relatable story of lost love and a loss of self, even if its scenery is pocked with 21st century ephemera and A Tribe Called Quest references: “I left my wallet in El Segundo/I left my true love in a West Lafayette escape room.”
New Threats From the Soul is a big album of big songs about simple things rendered with a keen eye for detail and a knack for lyrical wordplay. Davis previously honed his chops fronting the Chicago alt-country group State Champion, and grew up going to hardcore shows—a fact that becomes apparent in the gang-vocal-like choral sing-along in “Monte Carlo/No Limits.” For a songwriter who’s consistently aimed his ambitions even higher on the horizon line, New Threats From the Soul most aptly lives up to the “cosmic country” description that’s often been applied to the group, each of the seven songs in its hour-long sprawl containing gorgeously arranged and lyrically labyrinthine multitudes. It’s the kind of album you have to buy on vinyl for the sake of having a lyric sheet large enough for its intricate phrasing to be legible.
Certain highlights like the 11-plus-minute “Mutilation Springs” can feel like galaxies unto themselves, teasing a lo-fi, ramshackle bedroom pop sound at the outset but slowly evolving into something too diffuse to fit under a single roof. As it unfolds, it introduces more mesmerizing headphone fodder and more dazzling one-liners, and when a song opens with a line like “oh, the Spanish moss/it weeps in mourning of not only personal but also planetary loss,” you know you’re in for a ride. The most direct lines are the most poignant (“I can’t remember the last time the good times got so bad“), but it’s the multiplicative meaning that Davis packs into two lines that makes it worth an immediate rewind (e.g. “Jesus Christ is trying out some new material on you and me tonight/he has not nailed the crowd work but vice versa, yet stirred the Bloody Marys right“).
Even the most relatively simple material on New Threats From the Soul is endlessly rich, whether via the stunning pedal-steel-laden melodies of “Better If You Make Me” and “The Simple Joy,” or the sudden and unexpected eruption of a breakbeat in “Monte Carlo/No Limits.” The album’s penultimate song, “Mutilation Falls,” is something of an alternate take on “Mutilation Springs” with a different arrangement, an adjusted BPM and a warm coastal breeze blowing through it, coming to a strange and climactic close with a series of slo-mo Roland acid loops. In the rear view, it feels like exiting a parallel universe; it’s just Davis showcasing one of his greatest talents—taking something familiar and figuring out how to view it from the most compelling angle.
Label: Sophomore Lounge
Year: 2025
Similar Albums:
