NATHAN KALISH : SONGS FOR NOBODY

  1. Kalimotxo
  2. Pam & Tim
  3. Independence Day
  4. No Hope
  5. Delta Woman
  6. Songs for Nobody
  7. Mighty River
  8. Don't Confuse Me
  9. Standard Time
  10. Wino Christmas

Label : Nathan Kalish

Release Date : April 10, 2020

Length : 40:22

Review (Americana UK) : Nathan Kalish is the kind of songwriter that other songwriters love. He’s a road warrior and his travels fill the pipeline of the songwriting cycle. When you combine that with a band that’s turn-on-a-dime tight and knows how to groove across a variety of styles, the results are more than just okay. The songs on Kalish’s newest album are as sonically and lyrically diverse as the day-to-day life of folks who put in long miles every day just to spend every night in a different town doing the same old one-night stand. ‘Songs For Nobody’ covers a lot of ground but it’s held together by a focus on characters and scenes that know hard work, high hopes, and fragile dreams. Sometimes the songs take a perspective that is in the middle of it and trying to look up. Other tunes remind us that there are others on the outside and looking in. From the Bakersfield-sound of the title track, where Kalish lets us know that he’s “just passin’ by” to the bluegrass-infused ‘No Hope‘ where he reminds us that there “ain’t no hope for the poor in this country any more”, the album does a lot of things well. It does all the things that a good album should do and it does them better than most.

Review (Exystence) : Nathan Kalish could have called it quits. Instead of caving when times were tough, he doubled down and pushed through the road-weary trials and real-life tribulations. A mistress named music always kept him hooked, and now, he eyes his 10th studio album. A self-produced 10-piece, Songs for Nobody peers through the dust-filtered, bug-coated windshield of his touring van and sculpts various tales from the open road. He scuffles his boots through barren American dirt - kicking up the topsoil of greed (“No Hope”) and small-town woes (“Pam & Tim”). “I used to go to church on Sunday / Now I’m working for that overtime pay / It’s the only thing that can keep the Taxman away,” he depicts on the former. With the latter, a character study into the working class, he zooms in on Pam and Tim’s tragically common distress: “Pam she works mixing them powder coats / All day she’s breathing in chemicals / For 15 years, she’s been coughing up strange colors / On her shower in her truck and at church / That’s just life working in the US of A / When you got bills to pay / You’ll probably get cancer some day.” Recorded at Nashville’s Trace Horse Studio, Kalish’s Songs for Nobody blooms into songs for everybody. “Independence Day” writhes in the deterioration of freedom, a heaviness that has seeped into every facet of American life these days. “Some teenagers take LSD / And blow up the neighborhood’s peace / A dog sits alone in a house in a puddle of its own piss,” he sings, never one to sidestep the gritty details. Mass melancholy is just how things are now. He then concentrates on abandonment of war veterans, a thick disgust in this voice, “All gave some and some gave all / But the ones that did make it home / Are getting drunk alone in a garage or basement shaken.” Kalish rattles you to the core, and he’s unafraid to make you squirm - or at least jolt you awake. Honky-tonk rambler “Songs for Nobody” snapshots his struggle as a working musician and underscores with humor to break the tension. “Maybe If I wasn’t dead inside, I would stay with you for the rest of my life / But I’m just passing by / Playing songs for nobody,” he bellows. Songs for Nobody packs a punch - from classic ditty “Delta Woman,” born from real Johnny Cash lyrics, which Kalish spotted while touring Sweden and later fleshed out on his own, to the tear-stained “Don’t Confuse Me,” a duet with Lucy B. Cochran. The list of musicians is impressive; those are Karen Anne (double bass, electric bass), Daniels (fiddle), Adam Kurtz (pedal steel, electric guitars), Nathan Baker (andolin, archtop guitar, baritone guitar), Danny Pratt (drums), Zach Vinson (keys), Laur Joamets (telecaster), and Preston Cochran (bass).