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28. Complicated Game - James McMurtry (2015)

Americana

Songwriting simply doesn’t get any better than the songwriting found on Complicated Game. James McMurtry is the son of novelist Larry McMurtry of Lonesome Dove fame, and the writing chops didn’t fall from the tree at all. Complicated Game is McMurtry’s nostalgic tour of rural America, of the two bar towns that dot the south and west and an immaculate portrait of the blue-collar, oft-forgotten people who call them home. Each song is an intricate story, told with astonishing efficiency and with the candor of a man who’s lived them all, one way or another. McMurtry’s understated half-singing and half-speaking is perfectly apropos of the overworked and browbeaten people who he sings to and for. As much an unadulterated history lesson as a genuine folk masterpiece, Complicated Game captures the essence of True America like nothing that’s come before or after.

*image; cover art for the album Complicated Game by James McMurtry