We are almost at the end of the year and it is almost time to draw up the famous music charts.
I did it last year for fun, or at least for me it is, choosing the best 10 albums among my reviews (obviously not that I left out bad records, it’s a game in fact).
This year I will repeat the game, I think around the end of December and I was already preparing for this by writing an ideal ranking of the almost 40 reviews of this fantastic year for independent music.
The first 4 or 5 positions were already assigned, almost without thinking about it, because the records that for me were the top of 2023, were a certainty.
Stop everyone!
Just at the end, or almost, comes a record that confuses everything and, if not at the first, will definitely place on the podium.
What is even more incredible is that it is a debut and the seeds that had been sown with some successful singles (and even an EP), have become a tree full of juicy and beautiful fruits.
Tanner Usrey is the son of the state that more than any other is associated with music, not only country, quality: Texas and already from the first whims of his adventure in the musical world has alerted everyone that he was not just any, but an artist of another level than “many”.
In 2018 his first single Daytona Nights only on Spotify recorded 1 million listenings and in 2019 the wonderful Beautiful Lies, resumed in this debut, almost 30 million.
The singles have made inroads in the audience and you will understand that it would be difficult for a major not to look for it.
Luck has meant that the major in question was, in my opinion, one of the best in history: Atlantic Records and in this debut has left the overflowing talent of Tanner free to express themselves and the result is a stunning beauty.
I don’t exaggerate, friends: these are 14 pieces (15 if you count also the final which is the original version of Beautiful Lies) that will leave an indelible mark in this 2023 and will project the Texan towards a deserved success not only national.
I’ve been following this guy for almost 4 years now, after discovering him thanks to the fact that he had opened shows for the great Whiskey Myers and I couldn’t wait to hear his whole album: the wait was worth it!
Usrey’s music is a very red dirt country rock in some tracks: crazy voice, guitars and rhythm. But there is no lack of ballads and a certain ability to write songs that will also be loved by radio, without lacking in quality or character.
It starts with a bang guys: Echo in The Holler is an energetic and dusty country ballad to which the harmonica gives a western flavor and where the guitars strike deadly blows.
The voice of Usrey is one of the most beautiful of recent years and his lyrics are no less.
Guns Drugs and Allergy Pills is the return of the red dirt of guitars and rhythm, an electric shock like we haven’t heard in a long time.
The lyrics are direct and made of real stories, but the solo my friends is to make the walls tremble and the arrangement perfection.
Welcome to the world of Tanner Usrey.
Another super successful streaming was the single Take Me Home and the success is totally deserved: an acoustic ballad with the voice embroidering emotions until the guitar scratches the air increasing the turns of a piece that looks perfect for radios that want quality.
Here is the new guise of Beautiful Lies: a ballad of simple yet dazzling beauty.
No tinsel, no magic, just a voice that enters your soul and a love text that is a true poem.
The sound is more sought after than the original, the evolution that Tanner and his band have had in these years of a thousand concerts with great artists, is undeniable and gives a piece already beautiful, even more value.
All thanks to the duet with the talented Ella Langley, another artist to keep an eye on.
The titile-track is autobiographical, sincere and damn beautiful.
Acoustic, but with a very personal energy and sound that makes a crossover between country and rock influences.
Who I Am is rock to listen to while racing on the highway and the guitar whips the air and our face, with that ingenious carpet of keyboards, as if it were a piece of the golden years of Southern rock.
Light touch of slide and the intense and exciting voice of Tanner Usrey introduces us in the beautiful and melancholic Pick Up Your Phone: a request for help at home, to the family to remain anchored to reality in this life at full speed, the life of the artist on the breach around 150 concerts a year.
Another beautiful duet is the one with the Texan Graycie York in Last Goodbye: it doesn’t take much to excite the audience when you have the voice that these two guys have and Usrey’s ability to write poetic and sincere ballads.
Songs that will appeal to those who love country, to those who love rock and blues, but also to those who just try to get excited listening to music.
One of my favorite duet though is the one with Jesse England in the rhythmic Evelyn’s Eyes, almost a vintage rock blues with a dirty and scratchy guitar solo. Beautiful.
The record, like a beautiful circle, closes with the song that gave the whole career of this guy: Beautiful Lies is beauty and poetry, even stripped of the new arrangement.
You don’t need much production or arrangement, when you have talent in songwriting and an unusual voice.
An album that projects him without a doubt among the best young American artists of recent years.
A debut that hits the mark and gives the world a record without bass, but only with blinding highs: exciting and sincere lyrics, crazy voice, guitars that give electricity to the soul and a pleasant feeling of an artist who with him talent dictates the rules of his sound, without interference.
Lovers of quality music come to me, sit back and insert in your playlists this jewel, if you want to know more about the history connect with WCN Radio (in italian, sorry) wednesday, December 6 at 20: in my radio broadcast “Trex Music Club” (http://(https://www.facebook.com/TrexMusicClub) I’ll talk about Tanner Usrey.
#savethedate.
Good listening,
Claudio “Trex” Trezzani by http://www.ticinonotizie.it
(in Ticino Notizie web site you can find original italian version of this article)
