Don Gallardo - The Lonesome Wild '2020

Tracks list

Tracklist

01. Just Another Yesterday Song
02. Ghosts & Hummingbird
03. Honeysuckle Rose
04. What We Were Yesterday
05. Your Mistake
06. Too Stoned to Cry
07. What You Want
08. Radio Songs
09. I Wish You Well
10. I Wanna See You Tonight
11. The Movie
12. I Wish You Well Reprise


Gallardo opens the album in troubadour mood on the very fine Just Another
Yesterday Song, sounding for all the world like Steve Earle aping Neil Young.
Even more stripped back is the downbeat cover of Andrew Comb’s Too Stoned
To Cry, one of the highlights of the album with a lonesome Dobro (played by Old
Crow Medicine Show’s Joe Andrews) amplifying the strung-out ennui of the
song. However, most of the album is composed of sweet (and occasionally sour)
songs with dollops of pedal steel and slide guitars along with swathes of
acoustic guitars and occasional mandolin and keyboard. Ghosts & Hummingbird
reminds one of when Wilco was still playing “alt country” while
Honeysuckle Rose glows with ranks of glistening guitars creating a slightly
psychedelic haze with Gallardo’s vocals reminding one of The Beatles
later pastoral moments. I Wish You Well has a similar haziness to it although
here, the keen guitars allied to a sense of melancholia and Gallardo’s
yearning vocals recall the glory days of Big Star. Interestingly Gallardo uses a
couple of Beatles’ lines in some of the songs, see if you can find them.

There is some muscle involved as What We Were Yesterday buzzes with a Neil Young
like corkscrewed guitar and Your Mistake snarls with an attitude, its gritty
guitar and punchy beat almost NY punk. There’s some roustabout blues on
What You Want which one would like to imagine could be a tribute to the late
Mike Wilhelm. Anyhow, it has that insouciant old time swagger which was the
trademark of the early Flamin’ Groovies, Sopwith Camel and The
Lovin’ Spoonful, so full marks to it.

Radio Songs has to be mentioned as the focal point of the album. Almost veering
into cosmic county territory due to its superb pedal steel colourings, at heart
its soul is in the reinvented country blues of The Stones on Their Satanic
Majesties and Rod Stewart on An Old Raincoat Won’t Ever Let You Down.
Gallardo’s lyrics are stained with a doomed romanticism over a world
weary guitar strum, snakelike slide guitar and that glorious pedal steel.
Perhaps the best song we’ve heard this year so far.

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