Review: Hayes Carll- 'You Get It All'

Hayes Carll has been a mainstay of the Americana and roots music scene since 2008's Trouble in Mind brought him national attention (though 2005's Little Rock found a smaller, but not insubstantial following). During that time, Carll has proven that he does two things as well as anyone in the business: funny songs with topical messages and sad songs that cut to the bone. His new album You Get It All features both.

While the entire album is worth the purchase, and I'll speak a little about other songs, I want to focus this review on the album's two highlights, which hit Carll's strongest points perfectly.

First up is album opener “Nice Things.” There's a decent chance that, at some point in your life, you broke a figurine or a memento that a mother or grandmother loved and was chastised with some variant of “We can't have nice things!” For this song, Carll takes that admonishment and gives it a celestial boost. In it, God visits Earth to see what her creation is up to (was there any doubt God was a woman? Has there ever been?). She goes fishing and snags an oil barrel. She tries to toke with a nice old man and gets arrested. She tries to borrow a dollar for a coffee and is accosted by a group of protesting “Christians” who scream that she should “get a job.”

Throughout, Carll keeps it light while making sure to keep the message up front. While being handcuffed and placed in a squad car, God thinks “this is why, y'all are all strung up like Christmas. This is why, I left you all these seeds...” In response to the Christians, she gets a bit more pointed: “this is why, I gave you all compassion. This is why I gave you empathy. This is why I said to love your neighbor...”

The second, and the undisputed home run ball of the album, is “Help Me Remember.” It's a song told from a man suffering from Alzheimer's, an increasingly confused and heartbreaking portrait of a man slowly losing his mind, his memories, and his sense of who he is. Carll drives the knife home from the outset as the narrator forgets the face of his wife, but recognizes her from her perfume and pleads “Baby, I'm scared and I'm not sure I know who I am.” From there, it becomes more philosophical, and more tragic, by the moment, as he asks his wife to remind me of the kind of person he used to be. “Did I try to stand for something, or would I always fold? Did I do things when I was young, to be proud of when I'm old?”

By the time he gets to the end, and the conversation turns to the love he only remembers as a scent, gone as quickly as his memory. “Did I light up your life, like a full moonlit night in December? Won't you please help me remember?” If you've ever watched someone waste away from this disease, your eyes are leaking by now. Even if you haven't, it's a heart wrenching song.

There's plenty more to love here. The title track is as unvarnished as a “I'm broken but you have all of me” love song as has been written. “To Keep From Being Found” is a funky Southern rocker. “If It Was Up To Me” is an ode to dream fulfillment, and the unlikelihood of it.

For me, the two albums Hayes Carll released since 2011's KMAG YOYO were a bit of a step backward. That's not a knock on Carll or the albums, both of which were good, so much as an acknowledgement that KMAG YOYO was a career defining album. With You Get It All, Carll takes a run at proving that he isn't done defining his career. Not even close.