The Delines – The Sea Drift: Album Review

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The Delines third album is equal parts short films, short stories and Suburban Country Music. Sundance, SXSW Austin music festival and John Steinbeck in four minute vignettes. Read Rev Orange Peel’s review.The two principals are Willy Vlautin and Amy Boone.

Vlautin was the leader of highly regarded Americana band Richmond Fontaine, from Portland, Oregon. A prolific songwriter of observational story songs. The band put out 14 albums in a career span from 1994 to 2017. Parallel to this he wrote novels. Realist American Noir. The first three, Motel Life, Northline and Lean on Pete won critical acclaim and a movie adaptation of the last.

The Delines Sea Droft

Boone sang in Alt-Country band Damnation TX along with sister Deborah Kelly. She grew up listening to her parent’s Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash records. Which will give you an idea of her inclination. Both sisters sang back-up with those Fontaines at various times. She made the connection with Vlautin.

Vlautin plays guitar but the essential instrumental sound of the band comes from Cory Gray, trumpet and keyboards, Freddy Trujillo bass and Sean Oldham drums.

Boone has a particular passion for Tony Joe White, especially  the mood and atmosphere of the much-covered Rainy Nights In Georgia. She suffered a serious car accident after making the first Delines album, and a long road to recovery that may have been the end of her career. A tremendous amount of grit and determination and she was back for the second, The Imperial, in 2019.

Working on this album, Boone had a wish to sing songs of that style. I wasn’t sure whether he was writing songs or another book, she observed.

Little Earl.  Boone sings Country Soul with a lived-in weathered voice. Rather than the emotional plaintiveness of Hank Williams, she is less dramatic and more stoic. The tears have all been shed, and now it’s the transcending of acceptance.

Others have placed her voice towards Dusty or Ricky Lee Jones. She remind me more of Black female Blues singers who barely made it to record, like Geeshie Wiley. Or possibly Memphis Minnie. It some way she haunts the songs.

Little Earl is driving down the Gulf Coast, sitting on a pillow to see over the steering wheel. Brother is bleeding in the back seat. He’s searching for the hospital, even though his Bro’ don’t want it.

Each of these songs are short cinematic vignettes in black and white. The ideal director, Jim Jarmusch. The style, Cigarettes and Coffee and Mystery Train.

The musicians play muted soft Country Jazz with the stand-out being Gray’s trumpet. Thin, stark and soulful like Miles Davis. He is often another voice adding the soothing tones to Boone. Lynett’s Lament and The Gulf Drift Lament are two instrumentals written by him.

Surfers In Twilight. Volume is brought right down and the singer is close to whispering. Or breaking. My man handcuffed on the sidewalk street. What he is guilty of, she is not sure. Broken lives in a broken neighbourhood. A scene from The Wire plays out in your head. Closer to the Blues than Country.  

A small masterpiece is This Ain’t No Getaway. In the sketetal structure of the story a young woman finds herself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Six in the morning and the stereo is up loud but the neighbours are too scared to complain. There’s a gun sitting on top of the TV and the guy is staring into the distance. She is trembling as she carries her stuff out, determined to walk and not run.

This album is a musical connection to Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance. An acclaimed book published in 2016, a memoir which went a long way to expose the nature of of the dispossessed in Middle America, the Rust Belt if you will. Which went a long way to reveal one of the main reasons that Donald Trump became President.

These are sentiments that inspires Springsteen in his best moments, too. If he was present here he would add those high, lonesome wails.

Drowning in Plain Sight. Understated White Soul vocals. Domestic violence and craving love that is never cruel. A Mexican horn delivers it.

Hold Me Slow asks for love and comfort. A brief piano bridge and the mood lifts into classic Soul sounds of the late Sixties.

Saved from the Sea places some nice shimmering guitar lines on a song about despair. And what keeps you from going over into that water.

The Sea Drift is an album which needs to sit with you and mature awhile. Like good bourbon or Napa Valley red wine. Country Americana at a deeper level of honesty.

Rev Orange Peel           

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