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48. Junky Star - Ryan Bingham & The Dead Horses (2010)

Americana

Ryan Bingham’s voice has always seemed destined to perfectly embody the American Southwest. At times it sounds so wracked with toil that you forget you’re listening to a professional recording artist and mistake him for a genuine local who’s lamenting a hard life over a warm beer in some dusty dive bar in Nowheresville, West Texas. He’s equal parts blues and country, without ascribing himself to either. The authenticity of his songwriting and the grittiness in his voice tear down any walls between him and the audience to the point where each song feels more and more like a confessional.

Bingham’s third full-length album, Junky Star, eloquently encompasses the heightened sense of hopelessness that was endemic in much of rural America at the turn of the decade, as small town communities were roiled in the wake of a Great Recession brought about by criminally bad decisions made by very different kinds of people living very far away from Main St. It’s a collection of tales of woe that manages to remain encouraging. Laced with fabled American determination, it stands fast against the winds of time and change and remains unmoved. 

*image; cover art for the album Junky Star by the artist Ryan Bingham & The Dead Horses