While hardly a household name, IKE REILLY already has a rep. Plenty of music fans who adore passionate, intelligent, rootsy rock & roll (a decidedly unfashionable outlook these days) think Reilly is the second coming of BOB DYLAN, TOM PETTY and the ROLLING STONES all at once. The Chicago singer/songwriter has made a series of fine records in a timeless folk rock style – his work does indeed hearken back to the celebrated work of the above-mentioned masters (even more to lesser-known but equally vital artists like ELLIOTT MURPHY and WILLIE NILE), but with an awareness that times have changed and the world ain’t the same now as it was in the 60s and 70s. He’s exactly the kind of artist that music nerds of a certain age hope and pray appears to “save” popular music, and that’s a kind of hype and pressure no artist needs.
Fortunately for us, when it comes to Reilly, pretty much everything you’ve heard is true. Dylan does indeed seem to be his most overt influence, in the wordy but focused storytelling in his lyrics, his rock & roll sneer and his rough-edged folk rock sound. But he’s no Dylan clone – Reilly prefers to manipulate plainspoken language into clever, poignant statements, rather than dwell in poetic abstraction. Plus he’s less interested in being an enigma than a troubadour in the old-fashioned sense – he’s all about communication. Not only does Reilly speak clearly, with close attention to the little details that always stand out in our minds, but his songs are damned catchy, full of old-fashioned hooks and melodies. It’s a potent combination that commands scrutiny.
And Reilly’s work deserves that attention on Hard Luck Stories. The songwriter’s latest album adds a subtle sense of groove derived from old-school soul music, but that’s merely a new wrinkle in his usual quilt. The real story here is the songs themselves: tough, smart, heartfelt. Reilly often comes at a subject from a different angle. In “Girls in the Backroom,” he looks at the difficulty an Iraq War vet has fitting back into society, but does it through the eyes of the soldier’s sister’s new boyfriend. He examines the human consequences of the War on Drugs when a pot dealer’s daughter is taken away from him in “The Ballad of Jack and Haley.” Flesh-and-blood humans always take center stage in Reilly’s music – the working class lovers of the BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN-like “The Golden Corner,” for example, sound like real people instead of iconic archetypes. And as always with the real world, situations are never as black-and-white as we’d like them to be: the embattled father in “Lights Out” seems hapless at first but suspicious later, while the hardscrabble romantic of the rocking “7 Come 11” inspires sympathy and revulsion in equal measure.
It’s not all serious stuff on Hard Luck Stories. The working class high school graduate looking for a job in “Good Work” keeps his spirits up with a greasy groove, while the fast-talking would-be seducer of “Morning Glory” comes off as good-natured more than sleazy (though there’s some of that, too). Reilly goes straight for comedy in “The War On the Terror and the Drugs,” in which he’s joined by SHOOTER JENNINGS in an alleged political discussion that’s really just an excuse to talk about girls. It’s that balance of humor and pensiveness, laughter and frowns, reality and idealism that gives Reilly’s work weight. Lines drawn in sand get obscured too easily to let one’s worldview become calcified, and Reilly understands that. But even if you’re not looking for moral statements, definitive or otherwise, you can still lose yourself in Reilly’s memorable rock & roll. These Hard Luck Stories will resonate long after the music stops flowing, no matter from what direction you approach.
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