Music Review: Self-Titled Album from Buffalo Nichols
The debut album from this fascinating singer-songwriter is a stunning first glimpse at his talent—and a tantalizing promise of more to come.
My complete turnaround on the blues is well documented—you can see my hardline and wholly ignorant position weakening in articles about Charlie Parr, Annie Mack, Sarah King and Jake La Botz.) So this past fall when I saw Nichols open for Jack Klatt, a Twin Cities artist I love, it was the last nail in the coffin of my purported hatred of the style. I was enraptured by his resonator-fueled old school blues and couldn’t wait for his debut album to come out.
Although Nichols does acknowledge blues as one of his main influences, especially on this record, this really amazing interview he did with Americana Highways makes clear his opposition to being defined solely by that label:
“Even though right now, I’m kind of being introduced to the world as this blues artist, I’ve always just really been disgusted by the idea of genres as far as music marketing goes. I totally understand it—genres exist for record labels and record stores. … [but] moving forward, I just want to make music and I want to just be done with genres and boxes and all these things.”
Anyway, even if he wanted to belong to a genre, he might need his own new term, because he goes far beyond the blues: This album is so dark and—despite the high energy of the songs—really bleak in its lyrics.
In that same excellent interview, Nichols said one of the truest things I’ve ever heard—something that’s true of any piece of writing but is rarely acknowledged with this level of self-awareness by writers.
“Some of these songs are just not fully thought-out versions of me. Maybe that’s a truer version of myself, I don’t know, but I think it’s not the full picture ... it’s the rough draft of who I am, which is usually what you get in the first impression. You don’t get to think too hard about everything you’re going to say. Whatever you end up blurting out in the moment, that’s what people are left with.”
Not only is that incredibly perceptive, it’s also a bit of a relief to think that the unflinching pessimism of this album is maybe only part of Nichols’ mindset and world view. Not that this world doesn’t warrant despair, but you hope that most people can find some light amidst the horror.
But whether it’s a window into his entire soul or a small slice of his psyche, Buffalo Nichols is a tour de force. Nichols has scraped the depths of cynicism, sadness, isolation and rage to create a thrillingly dark, driving and powerful set of songs, a searing and all-too-relatable indictment of society’s crimes and humanity’s failures that’s also eminently listenable.
Buffalo Nichols. Photo credit: Merrick Ales.
Most of the songs feature minimal percussion—sometimes just what sounds like a stomp box and tambourine. Their driving energy and irresistible momentum come mainly from the resonator guitar, which provides a percussive rhythm as well as plaintively echoing the melody, often in sync with Nichols’ vocals.
And what vocals! Nichols’ haunting, haunted voice, so husky it almost sounds like an urgent whisper at times, perfectly expresses the depths of pain, betrayal, anger and hopelessness that are baked into his lyrics. Right from the first lines of the first song, “Lost and Lonesome,” you know this is going to be an intense experience: “If you see me in your town looking tired with my head hanging down / you may wonder what went wrong, why am I always all alone.”
Cynicism and heartbreak seem to battle for supremacy in this song (and in many others) as he wanders through the world, both longing for and distrustful of human connection: “You may say I’ve got no friends/ but who can you really put your faith in in the end?” he sings at one point. And later: “I had to ask the question how you learned to love like that, she tried to answer as she pulled the knife out of her back. … You’re gonna suffer anyway / ain’t it better with a friend?”
Nichols is even more tormented and hopeless in “Living Hell,” reflecting the outrage of life as a Black man in America:
Only two kind of people come here after 3
That’s police and crooks and they’re the same to me
That’s why they say you’ll either end up dead or in jail
Should I die and go to heaven or keep living in hell?
The track “Another Man” revisits this theme even more powerfully. I’ve got another song by that title in my playlist, and it’s about the same topic. In that one, Luke Callen seethes with anger recalling a traffic stop that he emerged from unscathed and picturing what it would’ve been like had he been Black.
In Nichols’ song, of course, the anger and pain is even more visceral. One of the scenarios references Trayvon Martin’s murder: “When my grandpa was young he had to hold his tongue / They'd hang you from a bridge downtown; now they call it ‘stand your ground.’” Later, he touches on what happened to Sandra Bland: “Another woman’s dead / Turn signal wasn’t on / They locked her up and now she’s gone.”
Nichols’ frustration boils over and his lyrics take a rhetorical turn: “Maybe I’m just angry and my words may be cliche / But it’s hard to write a song while folks get murdered every day.” And lest you doubt why the topic hits him so hard, the final verse makes it painfully clear: “Police pulled a gun on me / I was only 17 / But I could've been that man.”
A couple of tracks venture into the topic of love, which you’d think might lighten the mood of the album, but boy, these are some of the most dark, conflicted love songs I’ve ever heard! In “These Things,” a softer song with no discernible percussion, Nichols’ resonator is accompanied by a wistful fiddle and gently plunking banjo. It’s hard to describe the combination of morbid, fatalistic resignation and romance in this song; I’ve never heard anything like it, and I’m endlessly fascinated by it:
If I could be your place to hide, I’d tell you the sweetest lies
Knowing we won’t get out alive, I’d tell you that we’ll be okay
If I could be your mercy seat where your secrets come to sleep
Not the reason that you weep, I wouldn’t be alone.
If we’re gonna die together let’s do it to the rhythm of the band
I’ll dance to your beatin’ heart and you’ll dance on my grave
Just promise you’ll break my neck when you know I can’t be saved.
I can’t decide if another track, “How to Love,” is a more hopeful view of love. I mean, the lover in “These Things” sounds devoted, if macabre. That’s not the case in “How to Love,” which opens with Nichols snarling “You know a pretty girl’ll make you do ugly things.” But although it’s a song about being rejected and hurt, there is a silver lining in the song that might qualify it as the slightly more optimistic of the two tracks:
There’s one thing you did was good for me
You showed me things that I just couldn’t see
Made me realize I do need love
Even though in the end I wasn’t good enough
The way you hurt me showed me how to love.
Buffalo Nichols. Photo credit: Dustin Cohen.
Amidst all the darkness, there is a single song on this album that I’d classify as upbeat: “Back on Top.” A fun, energetic track with the fullest drum sound of any on the album—prominent cymbals crash throughout—it’s a brash, swaggering spin on a well-loved theme about being broke but finding ways to have fun.
It’s a fine line between a classic theme and a tired trope. I would classify “Back on Top” as the former. Nichols begs to differ in an interview with Working Mojo: “To me, it’s an example of cliché at its worst,” he says. “Full disclosure, I don't like that song; I don't play it anymore. It was something that I tried out. It was like trying on a jacket and I took a picture of myself in the jacket, I realized it didn't fit, so I put it back in the closet. But now everybody has that picture of me with a too-small coat on.” So, savor this recorded version of “Back on Top”—it may be the only way you’ll ever hear it!
That interview also reveals that this album contains a lot of songs that were intended as demos but ended up being the final versions. Nichols intimates that he’s already moved on from these tracks as a songwriter and is eager to show what he’s learned and how he’s matured.
I can’t wait to hear what that sounds like, but even if this album is just a moment in time that Nichols has left behind, it’s a stellar debut, giving us a first glimpse at an immensely talented artist who’s apparently got even more to show us in the future!
Carol Roth. Photo credit: Dan Lee.
Carol Roth is a full-time marketing copywriter and the main music journalist and social media publicist for Adventures in Americana. In addition to studying the guitar and songwriting, Carol’s additional creative side hustle is writing self-proclaimed “trashy” novels under the pseudonym @taberkeley!
