Justin Townes Earle
The Saint Of Lost Causes

This boy born in Nashville, Tennessee in 1982 is still relatively young, but he arrives at this album after a very long journey, with the heavy task, moreover in the year of the fiftieth anniversary of Woodstock, of putting together the last half-century of the history of American music.

Justin Townes Earle is the son of Steve Earle, one of the historical figures in American folk and "alternative" country music. His middle name clearly references Townes Van Zandt and as a child, he spends his childhood with his mother in Tennessee or roaming with his father, with whom he begins to play across the United States from a very young age and during the same period, as happened to his father before him, he starts using drugs.

This borderline lifestyle will accompany him for much of his existence and until 2010, when he ends up in jail after a brawl in a club in Indianapolis. The episode somehow marks a boundary line in the course of his existence: Steve quits drugs and begins a new phase of his artistic story. His 2012 album, "Nothing's Gonna Change the Way You Feel About Me Now," was a success, I remember it was talked about a lot even here in Italy at the time. For the rest, his discography continued to be good, demonstrating that in some way this boy had all the credentials to "surpass" the weighty and complex paternal figure which, after all, hovers within his microcosm with evident references.

"The Saint Of Lost Causes" (New West Records) marks a new phase in Justin's artistic and personal history. It is indeed the album where instead of surpassing his father, he seems to almost seek a point of reconciliation and to tread, in his own way, along his same path. He stops referencing his personal life and assumes the role of a conscious songwriter fully immersed in the contemporary reality of the United States of America.

The album delves into the social reality of the USA and tackles environmental causes, gentrification, and degradation in large areas of the country in a personal manner typical of great American songwriters, with references we can find from Bob Dylan ("Don't Drink The Water") to Bruce Springsteen ("Frightened By The Sound"), to Johnny Cash ("Flint City Shake It"). Amid the honky-tonk blues of "Ain't Got No Money," "Pacific Northwestern Blues," "Say Baby," there emerges a sensitive writing style that we could relate to Willy Vlautin and, in the more solemn cases, a closeness to the style of Bonnie "Prince" Billy. Most significant among all the pieces is "Ahi Esta Mi Nina," clearly referring to the father but ultimately that piece seeks, in a symmetrical way, to evoke that binding agent which the United States of America in these years seems to have lost.

A country rich in contradictions, but which has always been the beacon of the Western world and which is now closing in on itself, raising walls, renouncing its ideals, and thus consuming itself in what becomes human misery and degradation. The Christ Pantocrator on the cover warns and invites a serious reflection but ultimately conveys (despite the title) a message of hope and confidence that Justin here invites us to pursue.