Willie Wisely - Face the Sun (2019) Hi Res

Celebrated indie rocker and songwriter Willie Wisely releases his eighth studio album this week, across all digital platforms. His first full-length since 2012’s “True”, Wisely has spent 7 years emerging from growing his family in the peaceful sanctuary and musical hotbed of Laurel Canyon in the Hollywood Hills.

Feeling the influences of his epic former and present neighbors Crosby Stills Nash & Young, Three Dog Night, The Turtles, The Doors, The Flying Burrito Brothers, Love, and all the British groups who visited there in the 60’s to pay fealty (including The Beatles and The Rolling Stones), Wisely has concocted (in a mere 9 songs) a musical voyage so tasteful and honorific of his heroes, that it can only be heard as an open love letter to the music that churns his soul. And you will hear/feel every bit of his affection for the music of this undeniable golden age.

Wisely travels to the source of his life’s work (the sun, if you will) and pulls us through and back past a universe of emotions. Whether it’s the unhinged joy of the two opening tracks “Cut Your Groove” and “Sutures Loose” or their lamenting pedal-steel-drenched counterparts “I Can’t Sleep” and “Fall Inside Your Eyes” the new album will move you through Wisely’s tricky life balance of shameless whimsical passion and the deepest commitment to family and love.

If you’re seeking a through line for this adventure it’s two distinctly feminine textures in the form of, yes, female vocalists, and also the ubiquity of the pedal steel on nearly every track. Even the dizzyingly psychedelic “Illumination” has one. No fewer than four pedal steel players appear on this one LP (touché Nashville!). Yet “Face The Sun” never really speaks the country vernacular, but definitely does behold the quotidian compassions of the finest country classics, summed up nicely in a stanza from “Illumination”.

While the album harkens back to Wisely’s first classic long-player “She” (1996) with ebullient pop rock buoyancy, it also shows Wisely’s undying passion for risk taking and raw ambition. A hidden gem arrives in the form of a six-minute pop music symphony called “Invisible In Love”, written by Wisely with Philadelphia’s everywhere-boy Cliff Hillis. The song begins as a spacious ode to a break up in the harsh climes of Manhattan. It serves up CSN’s “Déjà vu” era but then suddenly edges into an almost-silence with little but the effervescent vocals of L.A.’s peerless songstress Kelly Jones filling your ears. Then it kicks in harder, then slowing all the way down to zero tempo, then to whispers and then builds up again into a tidal wave of bold, rocking sound, finishing with the all-but forgotten studio technique of the long fade out.

Emotional devastation comes in the form of “It’s Better Not To Care” written by Wisely with Platinum-selling writer Shelly Peiken and features the brutal, sassy vocalizations of LA’s soon-to-be-on-everybody’s-lips girl Sie Sie Benhoff.

“Fall Inside Your Eyes” is a rare unexpected cover from Wisely that is so obscure, and so completely emotionally owned by the singer, that Wisely would do well to simply claim that he wrote it. It is in fact written by lost-to-history Beatles acolyte Jackie Lomax. Despite being one of the “first four” signings to Apple Records; despite George Harrison writing Jackie’s debut single and producing the entire album; despite the Beatles all adoring Jackie and playing on the album along with L.A.’s Wrecking Crew, Jackie’s debut album absolutely tanked! Wisely has arrived exactly 50 years after its release to tease out the genius of the scene, and frankly outdoing Lomax’ original by quite a few yards.