Listening to the Music

Merle Haggard is Zephania OHoras guiding light, the artist who gave him an aesthetic as well as a sound. OHora approximates Hags warm, honeyed voice and hes studied Merles phrasing the same way Haggard picked apart the intricacies in Lefty Frizzells playing. He absorbed Haggard so thoroughly, that phrasing become his own, which means Listening to the Music, OHoras second album, feels idiosyncratic, personal, and fresh even when it sounds familiar. It helps that Listening to the Music is a considerable maturation from its predecessor, 2017s This Highway. Where that debut stirred memories of an old jukebox playing Bakersfield country 45s from the late 60s, this 2020 sequel consciously conjures memories of the styles 70s counterpart, when the rebellious sounds mellowed and turned reflective. OHora underscores this connection by writing songs that occasionally rhyme with some older tunes of Haggards. A plea for togetherness in troubled times, All American Singer nods at I Take a Lot of Pride in What I Am, the ballad Emily is wrapped in the same sumptuous haze as Carolyn, and the anti-gentrification Living Too Long kicks like I Think Ill Just Stay Here and Drink. The fact that OHora looks around his hometown and sees all his haunts shuttered isnt the only time he tackles the world shifting around him; the rents are raised every year on Riding That Train and he concludes the record by sighing how Time Wont Take Its Time with him. These are laments familiar to anybody who can feel the years piling up in their rearview mirror and thanks to an empathetic production by the late Neal Casal, this bittersweet undercurrent is always felt, even if its rarely pushed to the forefront. Listen closely enough to the music and it seems obvious, but OHora and his crew spend as much time with barroom ravers as they do on weepers, which is what makes Listening to the Music such a rich experience: its an album for the good times as well as the bad. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine