It\u2019s the best kind of magic when you think about it: Becky Warren transforms pain into art.<\/p>\n
Across three remarkable solo albums (2016\u2019s War Surplus<\/i>, 2018\u2019s Undesirable<\/i>, 2020\u2019s Sick Season<\/i>), singer-songwriter Warren has brought to vivid life the experience of veterans coming home, homeless people struggling to survive, and her own long battle with depression.<\/p>\n
Prior to going solo, Warren was frontwoman and songwriter for The Great Unknowns, a quartet that recorded their debut Presenting The Great Unknowns<\/i> in the basement of Warren\u2019s college dorm. The album, intended as a one-off for their families and friends, found its way into the hands of Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls, who then issued it on her label in 2004. Eight years later, Warren reconvened the Great Unknowns for this powerful sophomore album.<\/p>\n
Both an ending and a beginning, Homefront<\/i> feels like the moment when Warren figured out what she wanted to do with her considerable gifts as a songwriter; its approach is much more of a precursor to Warren\u2019s solo work than a successor to the Unknowns\u2019 lovingly crafted but thematically diffuse debut. Interestingly, it reveals that her magnificent solo debut War Surplus<\/i> was actually her second try at writing and recording a set of songs about her marriage to a military man who went to Iraq in 2005 and came home with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a painful journey that ended in divorce.<\/p>\n
Where War Surplus<\/i> frames the story as a two-character play starring fictionalized versions of Warren and her ex, Homefront<\/i> is more direct and confessional in its approach. The album features three-quarters of the original Great Unknowns lineup in Warren, bassist Altay Duvench and drummer Andy Eggers, this time joined by Avril Smith on guitar, along with many of the guests who helped fill out the band\u2019s sound on their debut (notably Tyler Wood and Scott Roy, joined here by noted Nashville sideman Jon Carroll).<\/p>\n
Leaning in to Warren\u2019s patented \u201cLucinda Williams fronting The Heartbreakers\u201d twangy guitar rock vibe, opener \u201cLexington\u201d is a muscular, steady-rocking number about regret and self-deception, starting at the end of the story by declaring \u201cI never think about you \/ I never wonder how you are\u201d right before she proceeds to do exactly that.<\/p>\n
Scott Roy features on banjo and Stefan Custodi and Smith on harmony vocals for \u201cDead River, Lake Country,\u201d a country-rock rambler whose devastating opening lines say it all: \u201cI’ve been lonelier than this before \/ Like every night I laid down beside you in your bed.\u201d Oof. The Unknowns lock into a Memphis r&b groove for the swinging \u201cA Bad Way,\u201d embellished by Jon Natchez\u2019 horns and Wood\u2019s organ, an upbeat contrast to a lyric that\u2019s pure gut-punch: \u201cYou know how to break a heart \/ And lay the blame \/ Twist it around \/ Say it\u2019s all the same \/ Yeah, you got a way with words \/ But it\u2019s a bad way.\u201d<\/p>\n
The twang quotient rises as \u201cWrong\u201d adds pedal steel to a cantering rhythm while Warren absorbs hard lessons about how time and experience can alter your point of view. Then the title track delivers a punchy blues-rock jam as Warren surveys the situation from the perspective of the soldier returning home, his bleak outlook accentuated by Wood\u2019s moody organ solo.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy The Time You Get To Texas\u201d and \u201cBirmingham\u201d offer two different approaches to a bluesy lament, the former languorous and brutal (\u201cAnd if you keep saying I don\u2019t really love you \/ One day, baby, it\u2019s gonna turn out to be true\u201d) and the latter a spare stunner: \u201cWhen I think of you \/ With your blue jeans frayed \/ I see the girl I was \/ And wonder where she is today.\u201d<\/p>\n
The blues get chunkier on \u201cI Wish I Was The Girl I Was\u201d as Warren remembers the last time she saw an old friend and regrets that she isn\u2019t that person any more; life moves on and it\u2019s always a little bittersweet looking back. The one track here that feels like it strays outside of the album\u2019s theme, the cheekily named \u201cLove Song\u201d is a danceable yet fatalistic rocker about not making it in the music business: \u201cAnd we knew we would never write a love song \/ We knew we would never make the charts \/ We knew we would never write nothing that you\u2019d know by heart\u201d\u2014the irony being, the song carries the stickiest melody and guitar riff on the album.<\/p>\n
If you thought maybe things would get easier from there, you\u2019d be wrong. \u201cLong Way Home\u201d is the album\u2019s topic sentence, featuring beautiful mandolin work from Smith and a devastating lyric: \u201cI know you\u2019re not to blame \/ But my heart broke all the same \/ You came back to me a different man\u2026. Oh, how I wish I\u2019d taken one more look at your face \/ Because you\u2019re a stranger to me now.\u201d Then \u201cI\u2019m Gonna Get My Heart Broken\u201d turns a steady midtempo number into an anthem powered by Carroll\u2019s organ as Warren reclaims her independence: \u201cSay what you will about me \/ Tell me I\u2019m reckless or blind \/ But I know \/ Somewhere in this town\u2019s the life I left behind.\u201d<\/p>\n
Closer \u201cArmy Corps Of Engineers\u201d offers a eulogy for the relationship, a bluesy lament for all that they\u2019ve both lost: \u201cFirst April without you \/ I went down to the bridge \/ I gathered all my ghosts and threw them in… The day you left for Baghdad \/ We stood along the road \/ And you promised you\u2019d come home in one piece \/ I know that you tried to make it true \/ But first I lost you \/ Then you lost me.\u201d<\/p>\n