Ryan Bingham & The Dead Horses - Junky Star

Ryan Bingham & The Dead Horses
Junky Star
2010 Lost Highway

Junky Star is the latest release from Ryan Bingham, the Americana-country-folk-rock fusion artist known primarily for his amazing guitar work and raspy “beyond his years” vocals. Junky Star is the third official album from Bingham and his Dead Horses backing band, following 2007’s Mescalito and 2009’s Roadhouse Sun. Bingham also contributed to the soundtrack for the 2009 film Crazy Heart, penning the Academy Award-winning track “The Weary Kind” for that movie.

His previous efforts are strong throughout and provide many reasons to be excited about his emergence. They don’t quite put it all together at once, but there were enough inspired moments to believe that Bingham was capable of creating a masterpiece, and it was hoped that Junky Star would hit the home run that fans had been waiting for.

In order to create such a cohesive, strong album, Bingham is forced to walk a tightrope between his two styles. He has one hand in traditional acoustic country-folk and the other in stampeding hard rock, and these styles often manifest themselves from song to song or sometimes within one track. The first two songs, “The Poet” and “The Wandering”, are both harmonica driven tunes displaying this dichotomy between the two styles of Bingham’s music. “The Poet” is direct and controlled, while “The Wandering” is fast and loose.

Bingham has the ability to go dark, as evidenced by the twangy, desperate and paranoid “Strange Feelin’ In The Air”, perhaps the album’s best song. This track contains a fine example of Bingham’s oft-employed breakdowns, where the song deviates from verse-chorus conventions and explodes into a multi-layered groove. Some of Bingham’s material, like the title track of the record, can be sparse, but it often works in reflection of what he’s singing about, especially on his Springsteen-esque stories of the dusty downtrodden.

Junky Star covers a variety of styles without problem. The record moves from contemplative acoustic folk to riff-heavy Americana to road house bar blues and back again, and neither the music nor the album’s structure suffer for it. The record strikes a much better balance between his tones than his previous work and keeps things on an even keel, eschewing the jarring transitions between tracks that disrupted his other albums and allowing things to fit together more seamlessly.

Bingham is only twenty-nine, but we get a sense that he is the real deal, and it’s not just because of his rootsy music. His gruff voice and stories of the dust covered back roads of the country ring authentic. He’s a trustworthy guide, knowledgeable of the material he’s singing about despite his young age. There’s a Bob Dylan quality about Ryan Bingham; someone who tells human stories with authority and who is talented enough to back up those stories with his music.

I’m not certain that this is the breakthrough that Bingham was hoping for, however: there really isn’t one knockout song in particularly that carries the rest of the record on its back. But there are a number of good songs not discussed above (the eerie “Hallelujah”, the sorrowful “Self-Righteous Wall”, and the raucous “Direction of the Wind”, to name three), and Junky Star represents a collection of music featuring a number of improvements over his previous two albums. Better lyrics, better structure, and evidence of an improved songwriter jump to mind. Maybe he’ll hit the grand slam next time around.

B+

John Lacey