(2022) Zachary Cale - Skywriting              


Review:
Born in Louisiana, raised variously in Jakarta and Washington State and now based in New York, often likened to Leonard Cohen, Townes van Zandt and John Fahey, Zachary Cale has been releasing albums since 2005. Skywriting is his sixth and is sure to fly above the radar. It opens with its longest track, the jangly acoustic near six-minute ‘Miles Ahead, Miles Behind’, which, backed by the rhythm section of James Preston and Ethan Schmid, concerns the see-saw of emotions between looking back and moving forward (“Throw down your silver/Get rid of it, forget the debt/That held you in chains”) and self-worth (“miles don’t measure you’re worth my friend/No miles don’t make the man”). Opening with an electric guitar lick and hisvocals showing a Dylan reediness, Cursed Spot is of a more folk persuasion and, alluding to Macbeth with references to paranoia and sleeplessness, points an accusing finger (“I can see the evil in your eye/Picking off the wings of a dragonfly/You’ve got blood on your hands/And no matter what you do they’ll never be clean”). Another track with a steady walking beat and circling guitar riff, If I Knew The Name, pivots around regret and wishing you could have done things differently (“If I could turn back time/If I could cross that line”) and of the obstacles that life throws in our path (“What is it that keeps us from/Finding some solace under the sun? Who holds the reins?/Who holds the gun?”) but also about endurance (“as long as I’m alive I’ll see it through”) and, in particular, the pursuit of getting love back on track (“So many things left to chance in this world/But I won’t let it stop me from knowing you… If we could start again from the top/If we could pick it up where we left off”). Riding a tumbling-drums rhythm, Come On Easy continues a theme of being stuck (“Never gonna get out of this town/Backwater born, backwater bound”), struggling to get by (“Trouble has a way of finding me/I try to do good but it don’t pay to be”) and carrying a heavy load, the downbeat mood (“every day I see the flash/A lifetime caught in photograph/Monuments to all we had/Swept away with the sand”) and the need to seize the day (“Love me now while I’m here, while we have the time”) carried over into Sandcastle with its slow, grungy Neil Young vibe. Spirit Drive has a slightly musically lighter touch to its cascading notes and softer vocals, but that doesn’t extend to the lyrics (“Time erases/Your foundation/With each mile”), keyboards taking the lead behind guitar shimmers for Green Screen, which takes the path of defiance of the odds and divine indifference (“Better get to finding out what you can do without”) and placing your fortune in your own hands as it builds to a more optimistic close (“Waltz with me/In the pouring rain/The lights have all gone out but we dance on”). There are more jangly guitars to be found on the poppier penultimate Bigger Picture, a song that references the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds as “stoned alone in a motel room” it wistfully speaks of the lost innocence of youth (“Remember babe when we were young and dumb?/You know everything seemed easier/Too busy letting our hair grow wild/Getting high off the sound of our laughter”) but also of lessons learnt because “If we didn’t have our mistakes to teach us/What kind of life would that be then?” It ends, then, with the 60s psychedelic tinted folk-rock of Page By Page, a Dylan-slurred road song from whence the album title comes (“Another town, another stage/Motel rooms left in disarray/Skywriting on the clearest day”) in which life is written “page by page a babbling brook/Between the lines one must look/If what is writ is understood” and which again looks back on glory days (“Here’s a kiss to remind you when/We were wasted, bold and brazen/We shot the moon right out of the sky”) and relationships run their course (“Grown apart to start anew”), but with an acceptance (“I can’t erase it, why would I change it?”) and hope for what may come (“There was time before, there’ll be time again”).





Track List:
1.Miles Ahead, Miles Behind 05:40
2.Cursed Spot 04:11
3.If I Knew The Name 04:17
4.Come On Easy 05:33
5.Sandcastles 04:33
6.Spirit Drive 04:06
7.Green Screen 03:37
8.Bigger Picture 04:58
9.Page By Page 04:44


Media Report:
Genre: folk-rock, indie-folk
Country: USA
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits


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