Justin Rutledge and the Junction Forty
No Never Alone
Shady Lane Records
By Marianne Ebertowski
 Just when you think
it's over and the last thing you want to do with your life is
write another music review, the unexpected happens. Out of the
blue a naked CD drops on your desk, no information included,
with a title like an Irish stadium rock anthem, made by a complete
unknown from God knows where. It looks like the sort of thing
you want to feed the neighbors' poodle, but the neighbors are
on holiday and so you slip it into your CD-player with a sigh
and continue watering your cactus. Then it happens. First, you
try to ignore it, you give your favorite cactus another shower
till it looks as if it is going to explode into your face, but
it doesn't help. What comes out of the speakers sounds like the
best thing you've heard since "The Gilded Palace of Sin"
in 1969. You must have finally gone mad!
With a suspicious glance at your cactus, you push the rewind
button. There it is again: a few slow and sweet guitar riffs
and then the singer's melancholy voice floats into your consciousness:
God I miss those girls from Barcelona
smell of roses and cocaine
I hope they know their parents miss them,
so do them sunny shores of Spain
I miss some dancing in the kitchen
Miss that long and stoned goodbye
to sober to sleep
I'm too drunk to cry
Ladies and gentlemen, meet 25-years old Justin Rutledge from
Toronto, Canada. Sit back and enjoy. We're just sixty seconds
into a truly magnificent album. You know that much already.
Sometimes you just do. A cloud of pedal steel and piano sounds
drifts by, a harmonica tears it open until it rains:
God damn my liver when it's thirsty
God damn my wallet when it's dry
Too sober to sleep
I'm too drunk to cry
The pedal steel fades away and leaves you behind breathless.
It can't get any better than this, you think, but it does. A
banjo introduces "A Letter to Heather." Rutledge sings
his guts out. A drummer beats and brushes his drums real slowly
and quietly and then a devastatingly beautiful Dobro takes over
the lead. Out of nowhere, the voice of Margaret O'Hara emerges
and her haunting background vocals develop into a stunning, glorious
duet with her young fellow-Torontonian.
A hard act to follow, you'd think. But another amazing female
vocalist whose name I have unfortunately not been able to dig
up, does just that and gives the steel-drenched ballad "1855"
and the moving gospel "Lay Me Down Sweet Jesus" a real
Gram and Emmylou flair. And the beauty doesn't stop there
no space is wasted on this album.
"Sleeveless in Seattle" is not only a great title
for a song; it's also a great song. Starting with superb interaction
between guitar and piano with another keyboard and pedal steel
drifting in, this sad and sensitive romance south of the border
makes you feel so hot, you want to open your window even though
it's raining cats and dogs and it's the coldest August I can
remember. Time to cool down and Rutledge has just the right
idea for it; a short instrumental intermezzo "Year of Jubilo,"
a classy old-timey banjo tune.
You can lose yourself in more gorgeous and spare piano and
guitar interplay accompanying the aching "Federal Mail,"
and then stumble right into "Special," a song dedicated
to a very special girl, even the postman thinks so, sung by a
lonely boy who misses her badly and proves that even an ocarina
can sound special and lonely and blue.
More loneliness and heartbreak can be experienced in "The
Suffering of Pepe O'Mailley (Pt.III)." It is the only up-tempo
song on the whole album and has a certain Englishness about it
(as in The Kinks), be it not for the steel and the mandolin and
the banjo and the fiddle which makes it, well, Cosmic Canadian
music, I guess.
To all good things must come an end and with "The Blackest
Crow," a vulnerable love song with Dylenesque lyrics that
quietly disappears into the cosmos with a fading old-time fiddle
tune that leaves you with an indefinable ache and a deep longing
for more, No Never Alone ends in style.
It is hard not to fall in love with Justin Rutledge's tearstained,
emotional voice. But what makes this album indispensable
is the sheer quality of just about everything. The nineteen
musicians Rutledge has chosen to work with are simply awesome.
Extra kudos goes to pedal steel guitarist Burke Carroll and piano/keyboard
players Doug Dyson and Tom Howell, who really evoke the ghosts
of Sneaky Pete Kleinow and Chris Etheridge. The songwriting
on this heart-felt debut album is brilliant, lyrics and music
alike, and there is eye (or should I say ear?) for detail in
the production. If you intend to buy only one CD this year,
do yourself a favor and make it this one! It will make you weep
and smile and believe that, after all, something good is out
there somewhere behind the rainbow.
www.justinrutledge.com
www.shadylanerecords.com
(Europe)
www.milesofmusic.com (distribution North America)
Contact Marianne Ebertowski at ebertowski-at-rockzilla.net
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