It's easy to sound tough when you're part of a gang, but it's a good bit different when you're traveling all by yourself. With his band
Night Beats,
Danny Lee Blackwell kicked up a lot of dust with the 2013 album
Sonic Bloom and 2016's
Who Sold My Generation, playing fuzzy garage-accented rock with a bluesy undertow. But with his band at least temporarily out of commission,
Blackwell was forced by circumstance to do things a bit differently, and he's doubled down on that thinking on 2019's
Myth of a Man.
Dan Auerbach of
the Black Keys signed on to produce
Myth of a Man, and instead of assembling a new edition of
Night Beats, they headed to Nashville and recruited some veteran first-call session musicians to accompany
Blackwell on his latest batch of songs. As a consequence,
Myth of a Man is easily the most polished item
Blackwell has released to date, and the harder edges of his garage-psych inclinations have been filed down in favor of a more pop-friendly sound that includes dashes of R&B and country rock as well as a sort of psychedelia that leans more to
the Lemon Pipers than
the 13th Floor Elevators. Given his previous resume,
Myth of a Man sounds like the last thing you'd expect from a
Night Beats album, especially when
Blackwell gets emotional on the countrypolitan "(Am I Just) Wasting My Time," the mournful and low-key pop of "Her Cold Cold Heart," the grand-scale psych-pop of "Stand with Me," and the cheerful, sitar-infused "There She Goes." But
Blackwell inserts just enough rough-and-tumble guitar to remind you this is
Night Beats, and though this reflects a very different side of his musical personality, his songwriting is in solid form throughout. As a vocalist he rises to the occasion, putting his usual sneer on hold and giving the tunes a rounded and nuanced reading that suits the tenor of the production and arrangements that bring out the details in the lyrics.
Myth of a Man ultimately feels more like a
Danny Lee Blackwell solo project than a
Night Beats album, but it's a very good
Blackwell solo album -- a largely successful creative detour that shows he has more up his sleeve than expected, though fans of his more raucous sessions may be a bit thrown by it. ~ Mark Deming
