Completed shortly before his untimely passing earlier this year, Nikki Sudden's last album is also one of his strongest. While his songwriting and lyrics are as tight as ever, the backing musicians play as if the songs are their own and lend them a distinctive urgency. Sudden will be sorely missed and this album, with its bittersweet mix of melancholy and exuberance, proves why.
Sudden remains faithful to his glam and blues rock influences, styles he's perfected over the years. The blistering opener "Seven Miles" sets the tone for this album with its searing dual guitars and buoyant rhythm section. "Don't Break My Soul" continues the momentum before things get a little slower and a little darker on "The Ballad of Johnny and Marianne" and "Talking to the Wrong Guy." He's never complacent, either, injecting an unexpected moment of bliss on the otherwise rocking "Empire Blues." "Green Shield Stamps" finds him reminiscing about his youth, mentioning friends he hadn't seen since those days, his profound discovery of T-Rex, and the bands formed by him and his brother Epic Soundtracks. While Sudden may have strayed a bit with maturity from the anarchic impulses of his time in the Swell Maps, "Black Tar" isn't too far from that sound with its loud, heavy distortion. Yet the closer, "All This Buttoning and Unbuttoning," is a contemplative instrumental with Sudden on piano, highlighting the range of his songwriting abilities.
Sudden also handled the production duties on this album, augmenting tracks with keyboards and complementary backing vocals in all the right places to round out the compositions and give them proper depth and warmth. The songs themselves, with their faded angels, unfulfilled promises, and haunted loves, showcase Sudden's strengths and versatility to the very end.
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