***image1***Don DiLego
Photographs of 1971
Velvet Elk Records
Don DiLego's latest album,
Photographs of 1971
, carries all the trademarks of DiLego's New-York-sidestreet skinny-indie style: soaring, almost yodely intervals, heartachey lyrics of loves lost and cigarettes lit and the road stories-can't forget the road stories. This is exactly the kind of music you'd expect from a lanky Northeastern traveler in vintage Western shirts and wavy hair blown back out the bus window.
For his third studio release, DiLego combines the narrative epic fairytales he told us in
The Lonestar Hitchhiker, Vol. 1
and the scattered melancholic musings of
Vol. 2
to bring us a cohesive yet varied
Photographs
. His bio reveals that one of his favorite films is
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
and that his first album was
Rhinestone Cowboy
, so it's no surprise that this western Massachusetts-born rock star has a little bit of a cowboy complex when it comes to wah-wahs and ploddy baselines. But never fear, there's not a bolero in sight. His Western inspiration is charming when coupled with the decidedly rock-and-roll riffs and pounding intros for which DiLego also has a penchant.
Best listened to at night, perhaps while cleaning,
Photographs
is a little heavier than DiLego's previous releases. But just when you think he's stuck wallowing in poetic murmurings, he breaks the flow, as he always does, with a quick slide up the fretboard. Upbeat tracks like "Falling Into Space" (which even has cowboy-like "ya-hee"s) effortlessly combat the melancholy of "At The Texaco."
DiLego got the idea for the album and its title track from a pile of white-rimmed family photographs, and songs of bittersweet twang and folky nostalgia underscore what DiLego describes as "the album's themes of giving reverence to our life's journeys and misadventures and celebrating the pain." It all becomes music to DiLego; everything from patrolling a bedroom in the middle of the night to a bible open in the middle of the road. And it all translates beautifully.
