her 2018 album Undesirable<\/i><\/a>, which offered vivid glimpses into the lives of homeless people she met on the streets of Nashville. The songs of War Surplus<\/i> grew out of personal experience in an ill-fated marriage to a veteran of the Iraq war who suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Where many might have dodged the heat of such a personal subject, Warren made the choice to lean into it and turn her pain into art, poring through the literature on PTSD and veterans transitioning back to civilian life, and connecting with other veterans and their families. <\/p>\nThe album that grew out of this work is essentially a novella told in a dozen interconnected songs about Scott, a deeply damaged Iraq war vet, and June, the self-doubting romantic who wants to redeem herself by being his redemption. As on Undesirable<\/i>, the songcraft is exceptional, with every one of these 12 songs containing at least one line that stung like a needle going in.<\/p>\n
The opening couplet of dark, edgy scene-setting kickoff track \u201cCall Me Sometime\u201d offers a concise summary of both main characters\u2019 backstories: \u201cI used to have a heart but I had to cut it loose \/ Now there\u2019s nothing in my chest but a mess of bad news.\u201d Then country weeper \u201cSan Antonio\u201d digs deeper into June\u2019s attraction to Scott, as she cries out that \u201cI\u2019ve been cut clean down to the bone \/ And the only thing I know is that I\u2019m finally home.\u201d And how\u2019s this for a closing line: \u201cYeah the great state of Texas sings something secret for each of its souls tonight \/ And you\u2019re the song that\u2019s been stuck in my head all my life.\u201d Oof.<\/p>\n
Warren describes the giddy falling-in-love moment from Scott\u2019s perspective with the gritty, buoyant honky-tonk rocker \u201cDive Bar Sweetheart,\u201d before he ships out to the Middle East in \u201cStay Calm Get Low,\u201d a wise, bitter, yet tuneful catalog of the twisted reality of war. \u201cKilling time in Iraq \/ Where the meaning of life is to make it back\u2026 You\u2019ll be amazed at what you learn to ignore \/ I ain\u2019t what I used to be \/ I\u2019m just a yellow ribbon on an SUV.\u201d <\/p>\n
June longs for her lover in \u201cI Miss You,\u201d a slow country dirge lit up by Warren\u2019s gorgeous, thoughtful phrasing and sterling lyrics about the alienation of loneliness: \u201cStale clich\u00e9s wearing cowboy hats \/ Line the streets tonight like needle tracks \/ Stoned on what they pretend to be \/ Not one of them means a thing to me.\u201d The closing verse is longing personified: \u201cWhen they made my heart\/ They did something wrong \/ Cuz it\u2019s been rust and dead wires since you\u2019ve been gone \/ Now I haunt this diner tryin\u2019 to disappear \/ I\u2019m just wasted here.\u201d<\/p>\n
This naturally sets up the rollicking \u201cSeemed Like a Good Idea at the Time,\u201d in which Warren packs the stories of three different soldier\u2019s decisions to enlist into a three-and-a-half-minute,\u00a0 foot-tapping, hand-clapping celebration of bad choices. \u201cIronwood Strong\u201d is another haunting ballad, a lullaby sung by June to comfort Scott somewhere in the desert half a world away: \u201cYou woke up with your memory on fire \/ Afraid you lost yourself outside the wire \/ You\u2019re gonna be all right \/ You\u2019re gonna be all right.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOff My Back\u201d finds good ol\u2019 boy Scott back Stateside complaining about his woman complaining about his drinking. For the sake of contrast Warren sets the song as a playful barroom blues-rocker even though at its core it\u2019s a bruising illustration of the spiral of alcoholic rage. That rage explodes in the headlong rocker \u201cTake Me Back Home\u201d: \u201cDrinking at the Sheraton \/ Too myself to sleep again \/ A guy said he\u2019d give me a shot \/ He sang a couple of verses \/ Of \u2018thank you for your service\u2019 \/ I nodded in all the right spots \/ It didn\u2019t go well \/ He had bibles to sell \/ I blame the whole thing on him \/ He just wouldn\u2019t hear it \/ So full of holy spirit \/ I landed one square on his chin.\u201d As the 4\/4 backbeat pushes insistently and the guitars growl and purr, Warren hits the devastating chorus: \u201cTake me back home, I ain\u2019t no good around here no more \/ Holding a match, soaked in gas with the fire of hell at my core \/ I try my best to fake it but I ain\u2019t what I was before \/ So take me back home to the war.\u201d<\/p>\n
That rage comes home to June in the dark, bluesy \u201cGrenade\u201d: \u201cI never would\u2019ve guessed you could be so cruel \/ The hate in your eyes when you\u2019ve had a few \/ I\u2019m a girl who can take the truth \/ Do you love me as little as it feels like you do?\u201d The mid-tempo barroom confession \u201cShe\u2019s Always There\u201d finds Scott sinking farther: \u201cAnd there\u2019s no friend on this earth who\u2019s got my back \/ Like the first cold beer in a six pack \/ I got nothin\u2019 to give, but she don\u2019t care \/ That bottle, she\u2019s always there.\u201d<\/p>\n
The album closes with \u201cAnything That Lasts\u201d an aching, hitting-bottom-and-looking-up ballad, featuring just Warren\u2019s acoustic and voice. As understated as it is, the emotional impact of lines like the one at the top of this review invites comparisons to the acoustic version of Springsteen\u2019s \u201cBorn in the USA.\u201d (Yes, it\u2019s that powerful.)<\/p>\n
Warren\u2019s vision is realized with sharp support throughout from Jeremy Middleton (bass), Paul Niehaus (guitars), Dillon Napier (drums\/percussion), and Adam Wakefield (organ and accordion), with the album\u2019s spare, organic production\u2014which frames these songs beautifully\u2014coming courtesy of Middleton, with an assist from engineer John Little.<\/p>\n
War Surplus<\/i> is no easy listen, but its rewards are rich and lasting. A gripping story masterfully crafted and sung with raw passion and beauty, it\u2019s tough and fun and sweet and harrowing and depressing and affirming and steadfastly real. It\u2019s music and art that does what those things always do at their best: invite you into a world that isn\u2019t yours, and convince you to care about it like it was.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":33965,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[10330],"rating":[5646],"class_list":["post-45793","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-becky-warren","rating-rating-a"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45793\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=45793"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=45793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}