Evan Barber - Until The Thunder (2022)

‘Until the Thunder’ is Evan Barber’s first solo album after a number of other releases with his band, the Dead Gamblers. He adds to a long list of songs celebrating the road or lamenting lost love, or both. That’s not particularly surprising because singers/songwriters spend years touring as well as falling in love and then being whipsawed between the two. Is the best course to trust love and stay, or to follow the Muse and go? How does Barber work with this timeworn material? In ‘Tape’, the first track on the album, he says: “She knew I had to go and it always made her sad.” Then there is regret: “I thought maybe the sun would shine take me back to a place where I remembered the time / We talked about tomorrow and it seemed so far away.” In ‘Seventeen’, love seems to win over the road: “Lord I’ve never seen the likes of you / I’ve been on this road a while I give credit where its due / It seems that now my drifting days are through.”