When reviewing a Becky Warren album, the reviewer\u2019s first task is to resist the temptation to just rattle off lyric quotes all the way down the page. It\u2019d be easy enough to do, but an album with this much heart and guts and craft and wisdom deserves more.<\/p>\n
The Sick Season<\/i> represents a milestone for the Nashville-based Warren, singer-songwriter of hook-heavy, expertly fashioned tunes that fall \u201con the rock and roll side of Americana<\/a>.\u201d Following a two-album run fronting her college band The Great Unknowns, Warren delivered a pair of powerful solo albums, the first a fictionalized portrayal of her tumultuous marriage to an Iraq war veteran with PTSD (2016\u2019s War Surplus<\/i><\/a>) and the second a song cycle telling the individual stories of Nashville\u2019s homeless (2018\u2019s Undesirable<\/i><\/a>), with both winning wide praise. The Sick Season<\/i> carries on their tradition of hooky tunes supporting heartfelt lyrics with a fresh twist: this time the subject of Warren\u2019s probing, witty songs is herself. <\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t her first choice of subject matter. Warren has struggled with depression since her teens, but for many years it had responded well to medication. However, just when she\u2019d planned to be promoting Undesirable<\/i> and starting work on a new concept album, the meds suddenly stopped working. Left toiling under a soul-draining black cloud week after week, Warren ended up barely leaving her house for more than a year. <\/p>\n At a certain point, though, she began doing what the best artists often do: transforming pain into something beautiful. It\u2019s a magic trick that only gets more impressive the closer you are, and The Sick Season<\/i> brings the lens in close enough to see individual pores. Maybe the most surprising part is that this album charting Warren\u2019s 16-month bout of depression is anything but depressing; to the contrary, it\u2019s catchy as hell, inviting the audience to sing along to even its darkest moments.<\/p>\n Spooky, reverbed electric chords introduce you to kickoff cut \u201cAppointment With The Blues,\u201d a coiled shuffle full of foreboding. \u201cA \u201975 Sunbird full of bad news,\u201d she sings, \u201cIs headed west for an appointment with the blues.\u201d The album takes off from there with the snappy honky-tonk riffing that propels the foot-tapping \u201cGood Luck (You\u2019re Gonna Need It),\u201d supporting a lyric that\u2019s as self-critical as they come: \u201cI\u2019m a tornado blazing cross a blistering sky \/ Rolling over houses of people I love sleeping unaware.\u201d The heart of this sing-along-worthy barroom anthem, though, lies in a single pungent couplet: \u201cNow I\u2019m a smudge on the moon \/ A dangerous tune.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI got uranium 235 in my engine \/ Never met a soul that couldn\u2019t use unhingin\u2019,\u201d sings Warren in the feisty \u201cFavorite Bad Penny,\u201d noting also that \u201cMy Molotov cocktails are always factory new.\u201d The steady-rocking, at times even soaring \u201cDickerson Pike\u201d finds Warren lamenting that \u201cThe pills all taste the same, like glue and desperation \/ I swallow them and pray they\u2019ll tame the chemicals.\u201d Even at her lowest, though, she\u2019s full of zingers like \u201cI\u2019ve been in this place so long, I\u2019ve named the bannisters.\u201d<\/p>\n At the heart of the album lies, well, the album\u2019s heart. \u201cTired Of Sick\u201d is a gentle ballad that feels almost like a diary entry or a letter written but not sent, raw and real and devastatingly honest. Longtime friend Emily Saliers of Indigo Girls guests on harmony vocals as Warren recalls better times: \u201cRemember when I was a girl, all cinnamon and horses of plastic \/ Buttons in mother-of-pearl, Tuesdays scouts and Fridays gymnastics.\u201d Rather than quoting a dozen more lines, I\u2019ll just say that it\u2019s exceptional, and exceptionally moving. Next up is its flip side, the album\u2019s most powerful upbeat number, the rolling, tumbling, jangly and altogether wonderful \u201cMe And These Jeans,\u201d another three-minute tune overflowing with an album\u2019s worth of great lines, one favorite being \u201cI\u2019m on the asphalt with my failures \/ Regret\u2019s a hell of a jailer.\u201d<\/p>\n From there, Warren invites you to join her in oblivion with the woozy crunch of \u201cDrunk Tonight\u201d before retreating into memory with the deliberate, edgy blues of \u201cBirmingham.\u201d There\u2019s time for one more juking honky-tonk anthem as \u201cRNR\u201d finds Warren wailing \u201cOoohhh, I\u2019m all false starts \/ Ooohhh, Are you just gonna stare while I fall apart?\u201d\u2014with a nice assist from Kira Small on harmony vocals\u2014before speculating on how she\u2019s going to spend \u201cthe days between now and happy.\u201d She finishes up with \u201cTommy,\u201d whose slumbering verses give way to gently keening choruses, a song of regret to close out an album full of them.<\/p>\n Warren is backed on The Sick Season<\/i> by a tight and versatile group of friends including her longtime solo bandleader Jeremy Middleton (bass & backing vocals), Great Unknowns bandmate Avril Smith (guitar), and Megan Jane (drums), with producer Jordan Brooke Hamlin (Indigo Girls, Lucy Wainwright Roche) contributing guitars, keys, horns and accordion where needed. The result is a recording where everyone sounds comfortable and in the groove every second of the way.<\/p>\n It\u2019s impossible to delve into The Sick Season<\/i> without considering Warren\u2019s timing. In the midst of a pandemic that\u2019s left much of the planet\u2019s population sick of sitting on our couches longing for human connection, The Sick Season<\/i> speaks eloquently to these concerns in a voice that\u2019s equal parts compassion and grit. <\/p>\n Finally, can we speak freely for a minute about courage? The courage to ask for help when you need it, the courage to speak honestly about the lowest moments of your life, the courage to keep putting one foot in front of the other and find a way to make something good out of so much bad. There are plenty of reasons to love The Sick Season<\/i>\u2014those big jangly guitars, those brilliant lyrics, and the powerful emotions Becky Warren\u2019s songs draw out. But the biggest reason I love it is because it\u2019s so damned brave.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":34169,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[10330],"rating":[5646],"class_list":["post-46000","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\/46000","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=46000"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46000\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51668,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46000\/revisions\/51668"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46000"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46000"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}