Peculiar, Missouri

One thing peculiar about Willi Carlisle’s Peculiar, Missouri is how peculiar it ain’t, except in the sense that the dozen tracks on the 32-year-old singer-songwriter’s second album are so unusually good. Rooted firmly in the country-western tradition of the cowboy poet, Carlisle’s music exudes the profound sincerity, whip-smart intelligence, wry sense of humour and lyrical imagination characteristic of the breed’s best practitioners from Utah Phillips and Townes Van Zandt to Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson.

Substitute a 2001 red Dodge Ram for a high-mileage Freightliner and Carlisle’s ‘Vanlife’ rolls down the fractal highway on pace with the funniest, rowdiest trucker classics. Switching the formula from straight to gay in no way distracts from the wrenching expression of romantic entanglement at the heart of ‘Life on the Fence’ (‘There’s a part of my life she don’t know exists / Why is livin’ a lie more easy than life on the fence?’). Meanwhile, the song’s brooding melody and waltz tempo harkens back to Marty Robbins’ classic gunfighter ballad ‘El Paso’. Produced by Grammy-winning engineer and Cajun maestro Joel Savoy, Peculiar, Missouri captures all of the intriguing peculiarities one might expect from a Wichita, Kansas native and former punk rocker turned 21st-century alt-country troubadour.