RATING CHART:
1 note – Pass
1.5 notes – Mediocre
2 notes – Average
2.5 notes – Above Average
3 notes – Good
3.5 notes – Great
4 notes – Excellent
4.5 notes – Exceptional
5 notes – Classic
Videos by American Songwriter
Jason Boland & the Stragglers
The Last Kings of Babylon
(Proud Souls Entertainment/Thirty Tigers)
🎵🎵🎵🎵
The eleventh album from the Oklahoma-born and raised Red Dirt country rockers Jason Boland and his Stragglers bookends a quarter century of their career. Boland rejoins with high-profile country producer Lloyd Maines, who helmed his Pearl Snaps debut (1999). It follows Live from Caine’s Ballroom (2024), a concise overview that included selections from his initial release.
The Last Kings of Babylon is another example of how effortlessly Boland’s multi-talented band connects with his songwriting. Although the music slots snugly into Americana, intertwined country, folk, rock, bluegrass, and New Orleans sounds and a smidgen of Waylon Jennings’s laconic mojo make it a distinctive, occasionally retro, and moving blend.
Boland has played every club and county fair as he describes a journeyman country artist in the honky-tonking “Next to Last Hank Williams,” continuing with when he’s gone, will anyone care? In contrast to those who notch greater success with fewer years invested, Boland has finally broken through to a larger audience.
The 10 songs display a dedicated roots artist whose experience and veteran status create material confirming his mature, incisive talents.
From the sweeping “Irish Goodbye” waltz with sighing pedal steel and trilling mandolin to the introspective ballad “Take Me Back to Austin” and the rustic hee-haw stomp of “Farmall” (describing the pride of running a family farm), Boland tells stories in the tradition of the great country songwriters; those who connect with a minimum of well-chosen words. His voice is as rugged as the beaten van he has traveled the country in, and he sings under the radar so I don’t have to hide in the gentle stomp of “I Don’t Break More Than One Law at a Time.”
He borrows some socio-political rocking from Tom Petty on Randy Crouch’s “Ain’t No Justice,” singing The rich get richer / The poor stay down in poverty. It’s the disc’s highest octane moment, punching the organic, authentic, and, above all, unadulterated approach on the album that should finally elevate him into major headliner status.
Photo by Will Von Bolton
Leave a Reply
Only members can comment. Become a member. Already a member? Log in.