SONGS OF THE PLAINS - COLTER WALL

Songs of the Plains are the types of tales told around a crackling fire, those of homesickness (“Plain to See Plainsman”), blue-collar labor (“The Trains Are Gone”), and folk heroes writ large (“Wild Bill Hickok”). This is Wall’s attempt to put Canada more squarely into country’s storyline. He covers two cowboy traditionals, “Night Herding Song” and “Tying Knots in the Devil’s Tail,” singing the former almost entirely a cappella and shifting its original jaunt into something more somber, haunted. His yipping yodel resurfaces for his take on Billy Don Burns’ “Wild Dogs,” where it conjures the coyote’s howl.

Wall pushes in close against the untenanted space of the middle provinces, filling their geographic gaps with an intoxicating rasp. He sings with a serrated edge, his voice digging crevices rich with heartbreak, homeland, and heritage. “Sweetly taking his time/Drinking all the straight rye/Chasing it with red wine/Heavy on his troubled mind,” he offers on standout “Thinkin’ on a Woman,” the tale of a truck driver who finds little solace in the big-rig route that pulls him away from his paramour. Wall’s voice sustains every line’s third and fourth words, rattling the cage that holds the narrator back from what he wants. The driver’s frustration—targeted at himself, at circumstances binding him to this road—are palpable in Wall’s quavering breath.