Maybe Americana isn’t a genre at all; maybe it is a state of mind, an attitude, both a sonic and heartfelt connection to the ground you stand on. The emotional depth and humanity, authenticity, and integrity found on Ryan Traster’s Lifers suggest as much.
This cool quintet of songs comes after a prolonged, health-related hiatus for the artist, but rather than consider it downtime, he used it to hone his pen and home in on narratives. The result is five songs that sit somewhere between heartland grandeur and delicate delivery, the universal and the intimate.
‘Little Town Big Heartache’ is just one more of the millions of tales of American small-town life, a reminder that even the most everyday lives are laced with the most broken of hearts and the biggest emotional experiences, all set to a country-rock groove that would make the Heartbreakers proud. ‘Moonshine Smile’ is about one of those brief encounters: hooking up with a fellow thrill-seeker, great while it lasted, but destined to be just a fun anecdote, something to tell to a close friend while leaning on a late-night bar.
‘Boots Full of Rain’ runs on a wonderfully loose groove, ‘The Well’ is chiming and self-reflecting, and the title track plays us out, understated and spacious, shot through with classic rock and roll guitar motifs and lyrics full of nostalgia and hope and inspiration.
What Ryan Traster does best is what the likes of Springsteen, Petty, and Steve Earle always did so well: take everyday lives and familiar small-town existence and turn them into the stuff of mythology. Not grand tales writ large, but still a backdrop to the people and places who move through these moving songs.
