Album Review: Justin Townes Earle - Nothing's Gonna Change The Way You Feel About Me

On his latest album, Justin Townes Earle finally seems to be embracing the family name and his namesake Townes Van Zandt. Read on to see what we have to say about Nothing's Gonna Change The Way You Feel About Me here!

Earle takes on his relationship with his father head on in the opening track, “Am I That Lonely Tonight?” “I hear my father on the radio, sayin’ take me home again, three hundred miles from the Carolina Coast,” Earle croons, his voice so full of ache its nearly numb, “Sometimes I wish that I could get away, sometimes I wish that he’d just call.” “Mama I’m hurting in the worst way,” he sings to open “Look the Other Way.” It is a Raul Malo-esque ballad of loss and abandonment. The title track follows the pattern of slow-tempo heart break songs. However, Earle breaks up any potential monotony by lining the melody with some beautiful steel and a haunting trumpet. The tempo picks up into a rough swing on “Baby’s Got a Bad Idea,” completely with a jangling barroom piano. The song is a roccus and teasing love song. “If you’re gonna break my heart, go on and break it, I don’t need you anymore” Earle sings with false bravado on Maria. It is a song that perfectly encapsulates that time after a person knows a relationship is ending but before their partner breaks up with them. The trumpet is pulled back into the forefront on the jazz inflected “Down on the Lower East Side.” It is a quiet, lovely ballad that feels somehow older, almost lost of forgotten Gershwin tune. “I’m not going to say I don’t deserve it for all those other times,” he confesses bleakly in the opening lines of “It Won’t Be the Last Time.” It is a simple musing on love and the heartbreak that the protagonist has left behind him. “Memphis in the Rain” opens with a horns loop that calls to mind the music of the titular city in the 1950’s. The song is a toe tapper that sets Earle’s gritty vocals against smooth, nearly syrupy, horns. “Unfortunately Anna” has the rambling wistfulness of an early Ryan Adams ballad. The easy creaks and cracks in Earle’s voice save the melody from being too simple and too pretty. The album closes with “Movin’ On.” It is a straightforward, bouncing ballad that finds Earle reflecting back on the past few years and everything he has overcome.

Justin Townes Earle carries a lot of baggage. Some of it is self-imposed and some of it comes from outside sources. Most of the truly great country musicians come into the genre carrying some baggage. Very few great country singers are born into situations that they would have chosen, and fewer still live restive lives of ease. What separates the great country singers from mediocre ones is that ability to turn that baggage into truly great songs. Justin Townes Earle carries a lot of baggage, but it is baggage that he is able to turn into incredibly great songs. Nothing’s Going to Change the Way You Feel About Me is another exceptional country album from one of the greatest country singers of his generation.

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