album review
Railway Gamblers
A Grey(T)er Place
Self Released
January 22, 2021
The South Side isn’t known as a bastion of rock bands; but out in the sea of hip hop, R&B, and the blues, the island of the Railway Gamblers has made a home. Drawing on americana and rock influences that span generations, they produce a sound that is at once timeless and tied to the modern heart of their city. A legacy they continue with their fifth studio album, A Grey(T)er Place, generating their finest work to date.
Shades of Springsteen, Petty, Drive-By Truckers, Uncle Tupelo, Hiss Golden Messenger and many, many more all grace the jangled midwestern americana textures of Brendan Folliard’s vocals and songcraft, producing an amalgamation so thick it emerges on a path all it’s own. While extended jam outs on “Comfort Me” and”Screamin' Hallelujah” show off his bandmates comfortable collaboration and extensive chops, it’s the intimacy of ballads “Wish There Was Rain,” “A Greater Place” and “Hanging Flower” that give the record a depth that some of their contemporaries find it difficult to capture.
Steeped in stories of heartbreak, hope, mistakes, and longing, A Grey(T)er Place feels perfectly placed in this time of great general anxiety and doubt. A reminder that the single moments in life may just be more important than the whole. Each track becomes its own universe. Tied inexplicably to the last and the next, with a single mood of reflective forging ahead.
With one of the album’s centerpieces, the spare acoustic “Chicago,” Folliard lays out a Dylanesque metaphor that captures the essence of our city during these turbulent times: “It’s a different world, it’s a different song, but the same old words, they just keep coming along, and they don’t seem wrong, you say you’re ugly but you’re beautiful to me, can’t you see what that means, if it means anything.” Even if the lyric was meant straightforward in this road love song, he is still seizing on the feeling of our quietly awaking metropolis, inching toward normality even though we don’t even recognize what that means anymore.