June 8, 2024

The new album from Michigan rockers The Whiskey Charmers, “Streetlights,” elevates their sound to new heights, thanks to some of their most compelling songs, filled with yearning, melancholy, and tentative optimism. The band, led by vocalist/lyricist Carrie Shepard and mercurial guitarist Lawrence Daversa, delivers a confident and evocative set of songs that offers an unflinchingly honest look at love’s disappointments and people who live in the shadows just off the outskirts of town. Many of the songs have a Car Wheels on a Gravel Road feel and, at times, evoke No Depression era rock, but they have a unique sound that splits the difference between Americana and rural rock.

While the finest tracks on the band’s fifth album (“Don’t Mean Nothin,’” “There’s Black”) tilt toward poignant existential doubt or regret, this isn’t a sturm and twang affair.  The album’s finest track, “Black Ridge Cave” is a revenge tale with the narrative economy of latter-day Springsteen and echoes of a John Ford western. It closes with an explosive, melodic solo from Daversa, who tears a hole in the horizon for the narrator to walk through. Much of the album sounds like a conversation between Shepard’s lovely, aching vocals and Daversa’s guitar work, which comments on or accents the songs’ sentiments.  As good as Shepard is as a vocalist and lyricist–and she’s superb– it’s Daversa’s bravura playing here that lingers long after listening.

It would be nice to hear the Charmers kick up some dust and let ‘er rip beyond a mid-tempo pace now and then, but that’s a minor quibble for such an accomplished record. The Whiskey Charmers deserve a wide audience, but musicians can only control so much while making the best music they can. The Charmers can sleep well knowing they have done just that.  

—Ken Capobianco, music correspondent for The Boston Globe and staff writer for Smooth Jazz News