Tom Russell
Love & Fear

"Love & Fear" from 2006 is a separate chapter in Tom Russell's discography: the first album composed entirely of new material after the spectacular "Borderland" from 2001 is a record that puts aside the western atmospheres of its predecessors in favor of an intense and introspective singer-songwriter rock. As can be inferred from the title, "Love & Fear" is an album that talks about love and other emotions, even forgoing the storytelling that has always been the trademark and undisputed strength of the Los Angeles native singer-songwriter in favor of more personal and meditative lyrics, offering eleven moments of great auteur music, of excellent quality from every point of view: the grand finale of a mature artist yet more inspired than ever.

The album begins with "The Pugilist At 59", a solid and intense blues-rock midtempo marked by the guitar of the always excellent Andrew Hardin, in which the disillusionment of a life faded in a succession of defeats and frustrated ambitions surfaces, a song that finds its natural convergence in the symbolic track of "Love & Fear," nearly seven minutes of "Beautiful Trouble": here Tom Russell sings with a particularly low and hoarse tone, almost a Leonard Cohen with a bit of Tom Waits' gritty pathos, and gives an additional touch of depth and suffering to this slow, smoky, and hypnotic blues, a song of rare beauty ennobled by one of the most profound and introspective lyrics ever written by Russell, a poignant and poetic reflection on emotions and the consequences they can lead to: love and fear recounted with sublime literary and poetical flair.

In an album like "Love And Fear," there is no shortage of ballads of heartbreaking beauty: the best are "The Sound Of One Heart Breaking", a masterpiece of melody and delicacy co-written with Sylvia Fricker-Tyson and an intense and sorrowful "Stolen Children", which tackles a difficult theme like that of children taken away from their families; both songs are enriched by the soft backing vocals of Gretchen Peters, a talented singer-songwriter with whom Russell will create the beautiful album "One To The Heart, One To The Head" in 2009. Gretchen is also present in the beautiful "Ash Wednesday", the most rock and electric ballad of the album along with the intimate "K.C. Violin". However, in this album, there is also room for songs like the tight and engaging rock of "Stealing Electricity", permeated with easily discernible energy and enthusiasm, and especially a masterpiece like "Four-Chambered Hearts": biting rock 'n' roll guitar riffs for the most political and sharp song of Tom Russell's entire career, which delivers a sarcastic diatribe against a typically American plague like organized religious lobbies, with all the hypocrisies, simony, and falsehoods connected to them, and also a more general critique of an increasingly plasticized and standardized society, enslaved by false idols and incapable of valuing true feelings.

If the opening of "Love & Fear," with "The Pugilist At 59" and "Beautiful Trouble" was masterful, the epilogue is just as impressive: "All The Fine Young Ladies", full of sighs and reflections, a sweet poem of disarming beauty, and finally "Old Heart", a very unusual song for Tom Russell, a piano ballad with jazzy nuances, suave and twilight, that places the definitive seal on yet another great album made by Tom Russell, the last released by Hightone before moving to Shout! Factory; the album manages to be introspective, at times suffering and always deep and vibrant but at the same time shrouded in a halo of sweet, sensitive emotion, and elegance, in short, a masterpiece, perhaps the absolute best in terms of lyrical and poetic components, surpassing the refined, innovative but at times tired successor "Blood And Candle Smoke".