Michael Hurley, Ancestral Swamp

reviewed by dave heaton

Devendra Banhart seems determined to use his moment of relative fame to support musicians he loves, whether it be friends and newcomers or veteran musicians who have long flown under the radar. Michael Hurley fits in that latter category. His new album Ancestral Swamp, released by Banhart’s label, is a fine example of the unique style that has propelled Hurley’s 40-plus-years as an eccentric folk musicians.

”Eccentric” in the bohemian, wandering, free-spirit sense. A comic strip in the CD booklet includes the line, “there never was a mutant who didn’t long for the open road.” The songs themselves convey that spirit of traveling, wandering, seeing where life takes you: a lonely but interesting life path. Hurley’s songs carry traces of deep blues and country, as you’d expect from American road music. And here they’re played in a bare-bones style that makes them cut deep. His voice and guitar resonate with the years behind them, the decades of his own career and those of the ghostly bluesmen of lives past. Yet as direct as his songs are, they also have an inscrutable quality, hard to track or completely follow. They’re tales of gambles, ramblers, the ever-elusive sense of “home” (“when I get back home / I don’t know where I’ll be,” he sings), the lonely highway and the lonely night.

But never that simple, either. There’s a fanciful, surreal side as well. That combination is ultimately what leaves the deepest mark: not just the late-night, dirt-covered glow but also the individual strangeness of a true American original.

{www.gnomonsong.com}