Jeremy Ivey
Waiting Out The Storm

THE REVIEW

At the beginning, it's Mr. Margo Price.

Jeremy plays guitar and bass and is a sort of handyman in Margo Price's band as well as her spouse, the latest and one of the brightest stars to appear in the firmament of the American country scene. Imagine, he's just there strumming those instruments because he's Margo's husband, you know how many more talented musicians could have vied for that spot with more merit, gossip the malicious tongues.

It goes on like this for about three years until Jeremy strikes out on his own and puts out an album in his name. Imagine, they only let him record it because he's Margo's husband, Margo produces it, even the single that launches the album is by Margo, the usual malicious tongues.

In that album, however, there's not such evident traces of Margo, of country, and of Nashville, and anyway, if Nashville comes to mind, it's the Nashville of Hank Williams and Johnny Cash, not the one that has turned country into a million-dollar business for tourists who take a selfie next to Elvis like they would next to a gladiator in Rome.

Be that as it may, a debut that doesn’t scream miracle, of course not, much more traditional than alternative Americana, but enough for those who understand to note that name emblazoned on the cover, Jeremy Ivey, and remember it for the next occasion.

The occasion comes just a year later and is called “Waiting Out the Storm” and, even if it apparently doesn’t change much – Jeremy is still there with his band, Margo produces, arranges, and makes an appearance here and there, it's still Americana – instead, in substance, the shift from the debut is quite distinct, due to a decidedly rockish approach that harks back as much to Bob Dylan grappling with electricity in “Bringin It All Back Home” as to Tom Petty's first three albums and, above all, to the one accompanying Johnny Cash at the time of his recordings for American.

And so, from a “Paradise Alley” which confuses alleys and lanes to seem like a minimal “Desolation Row” traversed by a rock’n’roll band, a “Hands Down in Your Pocket” which even on the imaginative level is Dylan dealing cards on the notes of “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and a “Things Could Get Much Worse” that redoes the ironic and amused verse to Dylan still and always grappling with his 115th dream; to a “White Shadows” drenched with so much Petty that you can't even remember which one, a “Loser Town” which instead aims straight towards “Refugee”; there, after traversing the grooves from one extreme to the other, someone might wonder if that's all there is or if there's something new.

If they asked me, I would answer that there's less than nothing new and yet, as long as ballads like “Tomorrow People”, “Movies”, and “Someone Else’s Problem” are written and the American tradition is handled with personality and skill as Ivey does, it seems marvelous to me.