Real Life Thing

Still active in his rootsy duo, Mapache, Sam Blasucci launched his solo career in 2023 with Off My Stars, a more 70s singer/songwriter-influenced endeavor that was inspired by coming into the possession of a piano. With another Mapache album arriving in the interim, he returns just over a year later with his second solo album, Real Life Thing. While still dwelling in a vintage, lightly orchestrated piano pop -- jauntily bittersweet opener "Howl at the Moon" features horns, backing singers, and more -- this outing was a more ambitious one, given that it was recorded in tandem with a slightly dramatized concert film of the same name shot at the same studio (Ojai, Californias Carbonite Sound). A personal album involving themes of life, death, and coping, Real Life Thing took some of its lyrics from Blasuccis debut book of poetry, which in turn was largely inspired by a period of serious illness between 2020 and 2022. With that in mind, his music is surprisingly bright and warm throughout, but with a Carole King- or Elton John-like mix of sweetness and cutting awareness once the lyrics are taken into account. A track like "Flower," for instance, opens with a jazzy, syncopated piano chord progression and lively saxophone solo before Blasuccis affectionate melody processes complex feelings with disarmingly simple lines like: "Just like a flower blooms in the sun/Just like a flower, I will too/Just like the springtime dies in the fire/Just like the springtime, I wilt too" ("And I will cry just like a babe/Because I am"). This wry undertow, along with whimsical instrumental touches like the castanets on "Do It for Your Love," adds a playfully ironic touch to what are elegantly composed songs. Its a mood, and something that makes songs like the more misanthropic "Behind Closed Eyes," or couplets such as "Sunday night/Hypocrites are waiting for your rise-and-shine" (from "Clean Up Nice"), not only palpable but called for. So, too, its in character for the album when a song called "Death" offers its most invigorated groove, while "Laugh Laugh Laugh" is its melancholiest. Featuring 12 songs and two instrumental interludes in all, Real Life Thing closes on another jazzy, fully arranged effort, "Witching Hour," a mini epic that articulates the desires "I want to be the one you love" and "I just want to be." ~ Marcy Donelson