Vagabonds: Expanded Edition

As guitarist and frequent songwriter with the Jayhawks, Gary Louris was on hand from the group's atmospheric country-influenced early recordings to their later grand-scale pop productions, so it shouldn't be much of a surprise that Louris' first solo album should embrace both ends of this musical spectrum. Vagabonds manages to sound grand and organic at once, with the arrangements and production capturing a sense of the wide open spaces of Hollywood Town Hall and Rainy Day Music, especially on the beautifully heart-tugging "She Only Calls Me on Sundays," while also encompassing the more ambitious melodic conceits of Smile and Sound of Lies on tracks like "Black Grass" and "Omaha Nights." There's also quite a bit of stylistic cross-talk between these two poles, and Louris' lyrics reach for a more personal and philosophical tone than he's offered in the past. There's a poignant search for answers in "Omaha Nights" and a longing for the solace of love in "To Die a Happy Man" that digs deeper into the psyche than he's been willing to go in the past, and even simpler compositions such as "We'll Get By" and "I Wanna Get High" reveal a new level of maturity and a willingness to experiment. Louris has rarely if ever been in better form as a singer than he is on Vagabonds, delivering his lyrics with a passion and sincerity that serve their emotional power well, and his guitar work is as strong and forceful as ever. Chris Robinson of the Black Crowes produced the sessions (with Thom Monahan engineering), and the pairing is an inspired one; the result is an album that sounds full-bodied but natural and uncluttered, and gives Louris' fine songs plenty of room to reveal their virtues. Anyone who has followed the Jayhawks' career knows that Gary Louris is a major talent, and Vagabonds demonstrates he's still capable of making remarkable music outside the framework of the band. ~ Mark Deming