One of the unspoken rules of the music business is that you can age out of rock & roll, but you're allowed to show your age in blues and country if you do it right. The blues have always been a good match for the gritty, eloquent sneer of
John Hiatt's voice, and he's been more than willing to push himself in that direction in his recordings of the 2010s and onward, as the celebrated singer/songwriter, born in 1952, moves further from the sell-by date of most rock and pop artists. On 2021's
Leftover Feelings,
Hiatt has blended his bluesy sensibilities with a subtle country feel, though he clearly feels no alliance with the beer-and-pickup trucks mindset of Nashville's current hitmakers.
Hiatt recorded
Leftover Feelings with
the Jerry Douglas Band, led by
Douglas, arguably the world's best and certainly most influential dobro player. Though
Mike Seal adds occasional flashes of electric guitar to the mix, this is otherwise an acoustic session which, as is the tradition in bluegrass, features no drums. The music is not bluegrass in either concept or execution ("All the Lilacs in Ohio" comes close), even though that's the path
Douglas and his bandmates usually walk; instead,
Hiatt and
Douglas use the group's tonal palette to reflect the themes and emotions of
Hiatt's songwriting, with the band deferring to the needs of the material rather than their past musical associations. And even when the music isn't truly blues or bluegrass,
Hiatt knows how to draw the rootsy sensibilities of his songs to the surface (they're never buried especially deep anyway), and the subtle virtuosity of
Douglas,
Seal, bassist
Daniel Kimbro, and fiddler
Christian Sedelmyer is a superb match for
Hiatt's songs and lead vocals. After two decades of
Hiatt's reliable excellence in songwriting,
Leftover Feelings does nothing to break this streak; the opening track "Long Black Electric Cadillac" is witty but a bit gimmicky, but the lonely wandering of "I'm in Asheville," the tragic family story of "Light of the Burning Sun," and the bittersweet introspection of "Changes in my Mind" are the work of a masterful tunesmith with faultless instincts about how to deliver his material.
Leftover Feelings isn't "
John Hiatt's Acoustic Album," it's a solid and rewarding set of songs that sounds a bit different than usual, but finds him working with some excellent and simpatico musicians who understand his craft and play into the feel of
Hiatt's material. ~ Mark Deming
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