Is BEWARE WOLVES coming in from the cold? A cosmic vagabond, an unsettled spirit, he has, over six volumes of searching songs, traveled each and every folk and Americana byway without looking back. Lovesick, heartsick, dopesick, but never homesick. Until now. There’s a vibe shift afoot on Volume 7, a breeze floating in from Laurel Canyon, with mellow gold strains of James Taylor and Joni Mitchell. This time out, Beware Wolves’ fleet and powerful acoustic fretwork and supple vocal melodies are threaded through with harmonies that stretch for comfort, seeking resilience, reckoning and reconciliation. Still, as always, there’s a haunt of regret. A dreamy lament, “Runaway,” opens the record with a wash of layered chords and longing counter melodies, recalling an acoustic shoegaze Bill Fox or Paul Westerberg.
The mood turns brighter on the sunny, soulful “Sail Away,” a dream that “someday, when the wind moves the right way” and lines untied, “we’ll sail away to a good time.” On “Signal,” plaintive harmonies reach out from the void, a transmission from a satellite seeking warmth in the void. And “Sirens” is a kind of broken blues, staggering with a chromatic lurch and steady groove that demands persistence: “When the sirens sing, if we give it everything, we’ll be alright somehow.” There’s regret too, though, in the time spent surviving: “Ages pass before we’ll find that there’s less ahead then there is behind.” On propulsive closer, “Still Horses,” Beware Wolves is, finally, resolute, reminding us over steadily crashing chords, “there are still horses wild running free on the plains” and “things in life that make it worth living.”
