Justin Townes Earle’s Single Mothers finds the singer-songwriter weaving his stories through family blues. Its stars dwell on broken families and empty homes, the goodbyes and animosities of those unfortunate people on the losing end of a “Hungry Heart” walk-out and the memories they left behind in an attic’s picture-drawer. Their melancholy, obnoxiously literal at times (see “Today and a Lonely Night”), is given a surprisingly warm partner in Earle’s Americana.
As smoothly as Earle can handle upbeat country soul rhythms, Single Mothers shines most brightly in its more modest arrangements. Sparser recordings like “Picture In a Drawer” sees the singer-songwriter in quiet recollection, a gentle slide guitar gliding around the background, as Earle sings about his own lost single mother.
Elsewhere, Earle turns up the country rock swing, his stories dancing with John Mellencamp-like heartland grooves. Single Mothers’ moments of rock ’n’ roll shimmying echo the likes of the Rolling Stones in their affinity for 12-bars and rock shuffles. There’s no missteps beyond a few flatter moments (i.e. the introductory “Worried Bout the Weather”), but these more upbeat songs ultimately fade from memory without the emotional weight Single Mothers’ quieter moments bring with them.
Single Mothers’ heartland rock side does have one standout moment, though. The most textbook piece of rock ’n’ roll on the album, “Burning Pictures” catches that rockabilly energy and runs with it, giving the album’s close an escapist drive as Earle burns his memories rather than dwells on them. Not exactly a blazing example of Earle’s songwriting talents, “Burning Pictures” nonetheless provides an interesting epilogue to an album about lingering loss, where memories are tossed aside rather than brandished.
Single Mothers is Earle’s ode to the broken homes that raised him (Earle’s family split when he was younger), where the remains of deteriorated families are found in an empty house and in buried pictures. Though it stagnates with clichés and a dry introduction, Single Mothers finds a striking heart in its lonely moments of peeled-back reminiscences. While he sings of an empty home, Justin Townes Earle shows there’s still something left in its four walls: the memories that shaped him and the ghosts who haunt him; a tear-inducing slide and a man’s heart.
Rating: B
