Folkie Willi Carlisle follows up his strong 2022 sophomore effort Peculiar, Missouri by continuing to take the backroads through America looking into the oddities and charm of the landscape and characters that make up the more rural, less traveled parts of the country. The result is a much broader lyrical and musically ambitious album than the last outing, occasionally great and occasionally, well, a little too overwhelming.
The opening title track, starting with a blast of harmonica followed by a rollicking banjo and Carlisle’s almost spoken word singing is a solid start. Telling the story of an attempt to settle down in a community in Arkansas and not fitting in when your neighbors think you’re a “queer and a communist” is the highlight of the record. It manages to be both touching, personal, and remarkably fun. Then “Dry County Dust,” almost jarringly slows down the momentum, followed by the sadly personal “The Arrangements” and “The Great Depression.” Both of those songs and several more that follow traffic in sadness and melancholy. “If we allow ourselves to sing together, there’s a release of sadness, maybe even a communal one,” says Carlisle. “And so for me personally, singing—like the literal act of thinking through suffering—is really freeing.”
Through that sadness though, Carlisle experiments with different musical styles, like the shared vocals and a lonesome bajo on “No Children,” sounding like a very traditional, old folk song, and the accordion on “Two-Headed Lamb” and the harmonica-driven “A Higher Lonesome” (another great moment on this eclectic album). The record closes on the mostly spoken word “Money Grows on Trees,” a song that would sound like an outlier on anyone else’s record but fits in nicely with this diverse collection.
Ultimately much of the charm of Peculiar, Missouri was in its stripped-down, consistent sound. In contrast, Critterland is certainly not consistent. Rather, it’s a disparate collection of ambitious, oddball tracks that sometimes grab you instantly and sometimes take a while to sink in, but ultimately make for a compelling listen.
