Water Liars’ Justin Peter Kinkel-Schuster Nails It All With Solo Debut ‘Constant Stranger’ (ALBUM REVIEW)

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justinpeter2There are moments in many of the Water Liars’ songs when lead singer Justin Peter Kinkel-Schuster’s voice seems to cut through the atmosphere, sharp and clear and hauntingly beautiful. The Mississippi band puts that voice front and center on dark, Southern folk rock songs that could easily leave you breathless. Now, with the release of Kinkel-Schuster’s debut solo record Constant Stranger, we are treated to 11 tracks of that familiar voice, sometimes a wild howl and others a low, quiet quiver. Solo suits him, putting his detailed and poetic lyrics more in the spotlight than ever before.

Like in the Water Liars, Kinkel-Schuster casts a messy light on life with his songwriting. Painting unflattering portraits of being a flawed man with that undeniable Southern identity, the songs on Constant Stranger will break your heart if you let them. While the quieter moments are fewer and further between on Water Liars records, Kinkel-Schuster brings laser focus to them on this album. He’s less concerned with rocking out, hard and loud, and more interested in storytelling.

Constant Stranger’s high points are when Kinkel-Schuster shows his knack for melody. “Headed South”, “Whose Will Be Done”, “Moccasin Bones” and “Laid Low” have that picked-up pace with a driving rhythm, like true road songs. There’s nostalgia and hints of memoir in these songs, and though they’re some of the catchier ones on Constant Stranger, their examination of solitude is just as raw. On “Moccasin Bones” he sings of disintegrating into a shell of a person following a breakup, and on “Headed South” he is the one to do the leaving, relishing in the loneliness.

All the while, Kinkel-Schuster maintains his deft atmospheric observations. There’s a distinct sense of place on Constant Stranger that is impossible to ignore. Whether it’s a mention of the moon and the wind in the Mississippi Delta, or “a sky the color of dark melon rind,” or “smoke and gravel”, Kinkel-Schuster is a  deeply visual storyteller.

On slow, folksy stunner “The Dirt, the Bells and I” Kinkel-Schuster comes to terms with his own mortality. He reaches a pure simplicity, as he becomes one with the earth. Like an old prophet offering up his last words, there’s an old world charm to this track, and it’s easy to see that Kinkel-Schuster is in touch with both his own roots and his influences, musical and literary. Whether channeling Jason Molina or William Faulkner, Kinkel-Schuster carves out his own identity among them with Constant Stranger.

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