Love Me Like The Devil

Collection Contents

#		Title	Length
1		Tennessee	4:03	Play
2		Jennie From Miluakee	3:03	Play
3		Bury Me Now	4:08	Play
4		Maybe	3:36	Play
5		New York	3:57	Play
6		Karrie's Song	4:37	Play
7		By My Side	4:09	Play
8		Love Me Like the Devil	3:40	Play

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Description	Amount
Bitmunk Marketplace Service	USD $0.78
CD Baby Artist Royalty	USD $4.78
CD Baby 9% Digital Distribution Cost	USD $0.43
Bitmunk Download Service	USD $0.42
Bitmunk MicroPayment Service	USD $0.01
Total	USD $6.41

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Description

With a name like Leatherbag (and his backing band The Cows), you might expect a rollicking, honkey-tonk sound or even a loud and crass hell-billy rock. In actuality, however, the songs on Love Me Like the Devil are all soft and slow folk narratives, deftly written and understatedly delivered with a mournful cello and slide-guitar backing.

Leatherbags voice is rough hewn with a weariness expressed in the best folk songs, but the scratchiness of his singing isnt overpowering. Rather it shades these songs gently with age and a wise-beyond-his-years sound in the vein of William Elliot Whitmore. The songs also move with a mysterious, slightly uneven phrasing that makes it seem as if only he could properly sing them. But those unique inflections and pauses also keep the songs interesting and rewarding amid the albums overall lack of variation.

The opening track, Tennessee, may be the best on the album. Like Springsteens The River or Thunder Road, the destination becomes an illusion of escape and hope, filtered through a lonesome memory: Cruising down the highway listening to my daddys stereo / Lou Reeds singin a song that both of us know / She said this is alright with me / I can follow these jagged lines all the way to Tennessee. The droning cello and quivering slide guitar give the songs the feel of late night cigarettes smoking out a solitary heartbreak, and even a love song like Karries Song is tinged with a feeling of longing and loss.

Leatherbags songwriting hovers on the edges of Cohen and Dylan, especially on the brilliant Jenny from Milwaukee. His best songs also seem to recall Richard Buckners Bloomed in their atmosphere and lyrics, and a touch of Smogs recent work in their intensity. But those comparisons should only emphasize the singularity of Leatherbags songwriting and the exceptionalness of the album.

- Doug Freeman Austinsound.net