As a songwriter or poet or any kind of artist you have “your guys” (using guys in the androgynous fashion to simply mean “people” here). The small collective of those that came before you and had a profound impact on your art. I typically whittle that number down to 3. 3 singers or songwriters or musicians that in some respect had such a profound effect on my own art, I  find myself writing a song then realize I just wrote a song that already existed from one of the trinity. Since the moment that I heard “Lost & Lonely” off of 2002’s “Flowers and Liquor” I knew that even if he decided to take 5 years  between releasing albums (as he did with KMAG YOYO and the just released Lovers and Leavers) that Hayes Carll was going to be “one of my guys”. Carll’s songs taught me that you could bridge the gap between introspective, poignant writing and humor in a way that was both impressionistic and unapologetic. With a delivery that is often times dry, but genuine and heartfelt, his songs open up a crevice into which you can see inside a man’s heart, for better or worse, and that sure as hell is evident on ‘Lovers and Leavers’.

On a broad scale, L&L is much what the audience has come to love and expect from the Texas crooner. Carll’s voice isn’t gussied up with bells and whistles, but rather wears itself like a pair of boots weathered by years of use and abuse. There is an undeniable honesty to the way he sings with cracks and fractures running alongside the stories it tells, adorned in dirt and raggedness, whiskey tinged and barroom smoke dusted. There is a beauty to behold in that characteristic. One for which Hayes makes no apologies, but is particularly strong on the latest from the songwriter.

Where KMAG YOYO was an uptempo rocker for most of its running time with shitkickers like the title track and “Stomp and Holler”, Lovers is a bit more tender and driven by the strum of a well used acoustic. There are certain embellishments, the soft moan of a pedal steel and steady rhythm sections, but there is a certain softness to the flavor of the record overall. Coming off of a record with so much energy may turn a few heads, but it sits just right for me. IT allows the songs to breath in a way that the words really need to. Carll needs to get some of that stuff off of his chest, and the arrangement choices really allow you to see into a songwriter’s eyes, and his heart. The man was going through some shit when this thing was written and the evidence isn’t hard to witness from the very first listen.

I smoked my last cigarette, I drank my last drop

Quit doing all the things I swore Id never stop

Changed my direction, sang a different tune

Gave up all the childish ways that made me old too soon

Things were going good there for a while

Introspection  often times gets a bad rep for being overly sad or a downer. Which, very often is the case, but I feel obliged to mention that Lovers & Leavers isn’t all doom and gloom. Certainly it has hints of love lost and a broken man trying to find his way, but there is a sense of light and optimism embedded deep within the album. “The Magic Kid” starts off with a slow pick and portrays a narrative of a young un loving magic tricks and the joy that. It’s simplicity and tale weaving take on Carll’s love of his son is heart warming. A proud father observing…a method to portray this story, perhaps being a bit envious of how the simple love of magic tracks and card games could be so impactful to a child. Wanting to go back to when all that mattered was what mattered to you on such a smaller plain. Hayes delivers this one in such an direct and sincere manner, with conviction and straight laced demeanor that it is that much more impactful. Love and acceptance.

The latest from Carll hit me in a way I wasn’t initially expecting. There is some great growth and learning that happened here in this album and the time between it and the previous “KMAG YOYO”. This is the documentation of a man who has truly looked inside and found what matters to him in the present. You can feel that here and the ability to FEEL what an artist is going through in the moment or captured when the record was being laid out, that is something special. This is some real shit and a brave endeavor for a songwriter to go about, writing about the realness in their life with no apologies or struggle to make it more than it is. We can only hope that in coming to terms with life more art and song flows from “one of my guys”.

Check it out today….

(Hayes Carll’s 5th studio album, Lovers and Leavers, will be available April 8, 2016)