There is an ache. There is always an ache. Be it that 6 AM calling you out of your bed, even though you just crashed into your mattress 3 hours before after playing a gig all night, packing up your gear, and heading home. Singing your heart out for a bar crowd for a couple free beers and a few spatterings of applause from an indifferent audience. But 6 AM calls, the workday, hard on your hands swinging a hammer or pounding concrete into place between stone walls so you can hit that bar later on after its quitting time to spew your soul onto the corner stage at that hole in the wall tavern another time. Real. True. Genuine. This is where the songs of Greg Loftus live. A writer who has truly earned the calluses on his finger tips and his heart.

The Austin by way of Boston songwriter’s latest release, called ‘Raise the Rent’, is full in arrangement but sparse in the way those arrangements are used. I mean that in the best sense possible…and hopefully after listening to this album that statement makes some sense. That is to say that the instrument choices do not get in the way of what matters most, the songwriting. There is pedal steel and drums and bass and of course acoustic guitar and vocal, but the words graze through all that and really burrow to the heart.

The album starts off strong with ‘Cinder and Soot’. Harmony vocals kick in throughout the song, the high moan of a steel guitar is spattered across the narrative and the song paces along. With a follow up, the momentum keeps on going at a medium pace, just enough to elicit toe taps and head bops. There is a groove in the songs here…a steady beat and strong rhythm courtesy of the bass line that really drives along strong.

‘Long Before I Rust’ puts the longing and hurt that Loftus spins so well on full display. A lone acoustic guitar picked and his worn, natural breaking vocal cast over the top. Barroom laments and solitary confessions to a mirror imprinted with a beer logo and a varnished wooden bar top. Dimly lit, but lit nonetheless. When he proclaims “just bury me alive in these city lights / just say what it is you came to say” I feel the guy’s pain. He is able to take simple phrases and mold them in a way that is both brilliantly self-deprecating but also with a glimmer of hope and remorse to make things better. F*ck, just too good.

A little of something new and something old with new life. ‘Five O’Clock Shadow’ and ‘Kill the Lights’ are older songs I had grown to love over the years of hearing his songs, but a new sensation of vigor is breathed into these tracks. Clever one liners throughout the tracks, humor, but seriousness balanced over a dobro or pedal steel.

‘Poems Like Gunslingers’ may have one of my favorite lines of any song ever burrowed in its verse. “You say you don’t like my songs, well I barely like my songs / I hope they all sing along cause this ones for you” , I mean, something so simple, the scorn he self inflicts that shows an incredible sense of vulnerability and humor. Intimate and profound. I could list the lyrics of this song in its entirety and write an entire article on how brilliant and powerful his words are for me personally, but I’ll let you experience that for yourself.

Greg has made Texas his home for a number of years now. Certain influences of his geography has weaved their way into this new record for the songwriter, but the songwriting, the dirt caked on each verse, the grit of merging the sometimes harsher parts of a city and blue collar working class days and dive bar nights, are certainly still at the forefront. There is heart here in Loftus’s songs. Undeniable, sincere, and heart felt. ‘Raise the Rent’ displays a songwriter at his peak. Throughout the 9 tracks the band around the songwriter enables him to show his versatility and growth as a performer and musician. Loftus pens with a confidence that is equally balanced with his own questioning of self and remorse for mistakes. A glimpse into the soul of a man. If that isn’t something special and moving, well I am not sure what is.

The new album officially releases tomorrow, December 1st. An early Holiday gift for us all. Head on over to http://gregloftus.bandcamp.com/ and get your copy or order it for a friend or loved one. A great new record from a fantastic songwriter.