Amigo The Devil Runs The Emotional Gamut On Spooky ‘Yours Until The War Is Over’ (ALBUM REVIEW)

On his newest album, Yours Until The War Is Over, Amigo the Devil (Danny Kiranos) continues down his avant-garde songwriting path in the vein of his heroes Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits as the thirteen songs run the emotional gamut from wild freakouts to nuanced emotional pathos. 

Kiranos showcases the appreciation of his influences directly as the opening “Hanging by the Roots” uses haunting guitar and bass in spooky Leonard Cohen style. The follow-up, “It’s All Gone”, sounds like a direct Tom Waits outtake with banging garbage can percussion and a vocal style that borders on a parody of Waits’ gruff style.  

Things feel more authentic when Amigo the Devil takes those influences and meshes them with his particular vibe. The ketamine-fueled, windswept electric guitar, gothic western noir of “I’m Going to Heaven” and “Cannibal Within”, a slowly swelling self-examination of addiction and depression, are the best of the bunch. They show the range of Amigo the Devil as a songwriter with fantastical tall tales mixed with brutal searching honesty.  

That touching sense of emotional truth is gorgeously painful in the searing “Garden of Leaving” which breaks down a relationship that suffers through the loss of a newborn with moving lyrics. “The Mechanic” is a pretty love song with vibrating strings as the waltzing “Virtue and Vitriol” glides over acoustic strums. Kiranos showcases his banjo skills on the excellently descriptive hoedown robbery adventure “Once Upon a Time in Texaco Pt. 1” that melds into a police scanner sampled coda of “Barrel and Staghorn”. 

A lighter take on emotional connection and the loss of relationships shows up in the smile-inducing, self-inflicting pain of  “One Day at a Time” while “Stray Dog” uses heavier guitars, drums and literal howling to pledge love and allegiance in rollicking barroom style. On the appropriately titled “Closer”, Amigo the Devil uses a spoken word tale of loss and love to wrap up the strong album as Yours Until The War Is Over is about persevering through darkness and pain while creating effective art of your own.