When the Turnpike Troubadours announced an indefinite hiatus in 2019, lead singer Evan Felker had a few personal issues to sort out: namely, his alcoholism and the fallout from an extramarital affair with Miranda Lambert. A Cat in the Rain, the band’s first album since 2017, predictably hits on familiar themes associated with recovery—redemption, renewal, and the bliss of domestic stability—but what’s most evident is that Felker and company are simply content to finally get back to being themselves again.
Choosing to record with the famously eclectic producer Shooter Jennings at Alabama’s legendary FAME Studios seems almost too obvious for a genre-straddling Southern band looking to reclaim its station in the Americana hierarchy. Outside of a swamp-blues cover of the Ozark Mountain Daredevils’s “Black Sky,” which sounds like something Randy Newman would write for a Pixar-produced Little Feat biopic, only the roiling opener, “Mean Old Sun,” offers much in the way of either sonic exploration or a darker edge. The song’s ghostly banjo-and-vocal intro sets the tone before Felker starts singing about finding himself careening toward oblivion.
For a comeback album like this one, though, there’s comfort in familiarity. “I’ve come back to the mountains and they’re all still standing there,” Felker sings on “The Rut,” offering a simple yet achingly resonant allegory for returning to a stable family life after years in the proverbial wilderness. His lyrics are often poetic, even esoteric, but they exist within the strictures of a country-boy vernacular: “No ring of brass run through my nose,” he crows on “Mean Old Sun.”
In that sense, Felker is a lot like the rest of the band’s members, who can churn out slick, twangy fare that appeals to the modern country listener but with enough wrinkles to transcend formula. Guitarist Ryan Engleman’s chugging power chords underpin the more standard fiddle-and-pedal-steel accompaniment of “Chipping Mill,” while the band grafts primeval mountain melodies with snapping radio-ready rhythms on tracks like “Brought Me.”
A Cat in the Rain’s most direct moments—its love songs—have the biggest impact. “Chipping Mill,” co-written by bassist R.C. Edwards and up-and-coming singer-songwriter Lance Roark, is dismissive of a lifetime of hedonism, with Felker convincingly claiming, “I always kept the best for you.” And there’s no questioning the sincerity of “Brought Me,” a joyous sawing fiddle-adorned celebration of a romance that was born in dingy Oklahoma barrooms, suffered through “damages and injuries,” and emerged as something seemingly eternal. Felker might be singing about his marriage, but for his patient and ever-growing fanbase, there’s another meaning to parse. This is, perhaps, the story of Turnpike Troubadours so far.
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