The Window & The Light (2011)

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Blake Thomas moved to Minneapolis in October after spending six years, more or less, in Madison. During those years, the longest stretch he’s lived anywhere since he left home, he released his first three records, and made a lot of friends. These friends make up the hometown all-star band that backed him on his fourth release, The Window and the Light. Thomas is the center of every song, with his guitar and honey-whiskey voice, but the other dozen (almost) musicians involved in the project truly make it a group effort. The core band features skilled guitarist Josh Harty, who also lends backing vocals, notably on “The Last Thing.” The rhythm section includes the understated and oft-intriguing drummer Chris Sasman and multi-instrumentalist Louka Patenaude. The story goes that, while tuning the bass prior to recording, Patenaude broke a string. Rather than risk throwing off the sound of the instrument by adding a new string to the older ones, he played the whole record with only three strings. You would never guess. Other notable guests include Teddy Pedriana, who adds his psychedelic keyboards to several tracks (most remarkably on “Cradle to the Ground”), and Mary Gaines, who contributes lovely backing vocals and cello.

The songs on Flatlands, his previous release, spilled out of him in a very short amount of time, the product of an uncertain and emotional time in his life. In contrast, the songs on this new CD were years in the making. While they don’t have the same emotional punch as the confessionals on Flatlands, they are just as strong and demonstrate an increased range in his songwriting. This is a different Blake Thomas than the sensitive singer-songwriter we’d gotten to know over the course of three records. For one, he likes to rock a lot more. The record makes that clear from the opening track, the incendiary “Fire and Bones,” which features the intense electric guitar of the Blueheels’ Justin Bricco. It’s followed by the oldest of this batch of songs, another rocker “Keeping Score,” buoyed by Chris Wagoner’s expert fiddle. A song of resignation, “I don’t know who the winner is ’cause I stopped keeping score, and I just don’t care like I did before,” it also gives us some interesting imagery, like “that man’s a low down, sawed off son of a bitch, he has a heart just like a harpoon.” I don’t really know what that means, but it tells me what I need to know about “a man named Jones.”

The title track is unlike anything he’s done before: an extended jam that swells toward the eight-minute mark as it closes the record. When I reviewed Thomas’s first release, Real Like Theater (recorded with backing band the Downtown Brown), I compared him (favorably) to David Gray— a comparison I initially thought he was upset about, only to find out later that he had been listening to Gray’s pre-fame record, A Century Ends, a lot prior to recording that record. Over the years that voice hadn’t seemed as obvious, but I hear it again loud and clear in this song. The record is also unusual in that it includes two covers, and on one Thomas doesn’t even sing lead. For years he shared the microphone at Mickey’s Tavern every Tuesday night with another of Madison’s best songwriters, Jeremiah Nelson. When Nelson decided not to include the once-bitten, twice-shy lament “Bad Love” on his record, Thomas liberated it. Nelson also gets a shout-out in one of Blake’s songs, “Tell Jerry he can have the Mossman when exhaustion takes me.” The Mossman in question is the gorgeous, and rare, acoustic guitar Thomas plays. Coming as a bit of a surprise, the sweet-voiced Mary Fox sings lead on “Let Me Play in Your Show,” a song that Fox, who is also Thomas’s fiancé, wrote about him many years ago.

The song that sounds most like the Thomas of previous records is the beautiful lullaby “Maybelle.” Presumably written for his future daughter, the song opines “Maybelle oh Maybelle, I can’t wait to meet you with your mother’s brown eyes and a voice of champagne.” It’s perhaps the most tender song he’s ever written, and that’s saying something. If you are looking for more songs like this guitar-and-mandolin tune, I point you to the soundtrack to Our Town, which he recorded earlier this year. The collection of traditional covers from Thomas and Fox, on which he plays every instrument, was recorded in conjunction with a play they both starred in earlier this year. It’s just another reminder of what a diversely talented artist Blake Thomas is.

-Mad Folk News (Review by Kiki Schueler)