Someday I'll Be Caught: A Brief Review Of The New Album From Ethan Daniel Davidson (His Name Is Alive, Slumber Party)

The new release from Ethan Daniel Davidson, Come Down Lonesome has all the trappings of a country record but this isn't even New Country, or really alt-country. It's country in the way that the best Sparklehorse records were, you know? Out now via Blue Arrow Records, the release, with contributions and production from Gretchen Gonzales Davidson of Slumber Party and Warren Defever of His Name Is Alive, is haunting in spots, and largely engrossing.

"Leaving Cheyenne" is suitably twang-y, even if it's nothing like the original, while the cover of "I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine" renders the Dylan song a haunting thing. It's closer in spirit to His Name is Alive's output in the mid-Nineties, and if you go into this knowing that Warren Defever's on this record, that makes even more sense. Elsewhere, "Someday I'll Be Caught" is mournful. This original reveals how easily Davidson can pen tunes that mimic the timelessness of the other songs here, and is an indication of Davidson's good taste in arrangements as well.

So much of the strength of Come Down Lonesome is down to the production and effects here that one almost doesn't care what's a cover and what's an original. The whole album has a mesmeric power that is only tangentially related to the sort of country and folk that inspired a few of these selections. Davidson's far more interested in conjuring up a mood than being another folk singer, I think, and that's why I enjoyed this release.

Come Down Lonesome is out now via Blue Arrow Records.

More details via the official website.