Review: Todd Snider 'High, Lonesome, and Then Some'
If you just looked at the title of Todd Snider's new album, High, Lonesome, and The Some, you might get the idea that Snider had decided to make a bluegrass album. But then, if you know Snider's music, you know that he has dedicated a lot of songs to being high and a lot of songs to being lonesome, and neither of those things has to do with the “high and lonesome” sound of Ralph Stanley. On High, Lonesome, and Then Some, Snider moves away from the folksier sound of much of his back catalog and into a world-weary blues shuffle that fits both his current life state and the current state of the world.
It's been a rough last few years for Snider. Spinal Stenosis left him with chronic back pain and kept him off the road for several years, and left him facing his body's own fallibility. He also lost some of his musical mentors, like John Prine and Jimmy Buffett. High, Lonesome, and Then Some channels some of that pain and mortality into his cracked vocals and often fatalistic lyrics. But beneath it all is the core of humor that has driven Snider's career since his debut. On album closer “The Temptation to Exist”, he hits both sides of that coin, noting “you've got to live a little, people die a lot” before musing “how hard can it be? Everybody does it?”
Another standout track is “Stoner Yodel #2 (Raelynn Nelson)”, which finds Snider relating an unrequited (and likely fictional, considering the two's close friendship) love for Willie Nelson's granddaughter. “I am a humble man, but jealousy keeps me alive,” Snider deadpans before assuring the audience that “when she said she'd rather be friends, I said that's just what I was about to say.” Always the optimist, he declares at the end of the song that “Raelynn Nelson, she's gonna settle for me someday.”
“It's Hard to Be Happy” is a song for the times, with its repeated mantra “It's hard to be happy, even when there's nothing wrong. It's hard to be happy with everything going on.” The rest of the song is a trip through futile therapy, with Snider sitting in a “room full of people staring up at his framed Ivy League degree.”
The rest of the album continues that balance between sadness and humor. “Older Women” is Snider's ode to the experience and wisdom of ladies of a certain age. “While We Still Have a Chance” is the album's saddest song, with Snider begging an ex to take one last trip to Reno with him. “Unforgivable” recounts a plane trip with a chatty fellow passenger who might or might not be the Count of St. Germain.
To bring the album together, Snider has assembled one hell of a band. Joining him are Sterling Finlay, Robbie Crowell, Joe Bisirri, and the always excellent Aaron Lee Tasjan. Tasjan, Crowell, and Bisirri also co-produced the album.
For folks who may only be familiar with Todd Snider's older works like Happy to Be Here or the seminal East Nashville Skyline, High, Lonesome, and Then Some might seem like a marked departure for the folk troubadour. But for longtime fans, the bluesy turn is just another turn in the road trip that is Todd Snider's career. It's a different album than any he's put out before, alternately darker and more hopeful, but at it's core, it's all Todd Snider.