“Wes Tirey Sings Selected Works of Billy the Kid” - Sun Cru :: 07/19
A splendid shadow supplies cautious footprints across historical red clay. Its stride forbidden as it levitates above lands both holy and melodically dehydrated. A southern solider riddled with satire as he occupies luddite cocktail lounges filled with broken tongues and open minds closed. Its petrified doors of viking wood introduces an entrance to its loyal customers like that of some silvery portal into the odorless echo chamber of man. Born and raised in Farmersville, OH, the now North Carolina based singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, coffee conisyuour, visual artist and poet Wes Tirey returns after the success and high praise of 2021’s “The Midwest Book of the Day” with his debut on Sun Cru entitled “Wes Tirey Sings Selected Works of Billy the Kid”. A melodic canvas splintering hands as they carry its vertical carcass from one marble hallway to another, Tirey delivers yet another incredibly exciting piece from his powerful discography of long lost tales filled with hope and starved faith. As much a cinematic experience as it is a book of collected songs, Tirey combines his love and passion for literature with this darkened lullaby and erases that infamous line of boundary chalk with his vintage boot from a thrifted afterlife.
A saga into the nothingness of memory and exquisite taste, “Wes Tirey Sings Selected Works of Billy the Kid” embodies this gorgeous landscape of blissed out country raga. A nearly blinding narrative of lustful exploration into the depths of folklore and cowboy accuracy, Tirey weighs in on the nature of the beast by wielding a bow tuned with smooth nylon into the darkness of song and soothsayer blues. Both conceptually pleasing and melodically perfected, the album deepens its bruised feet into the sacred clay of time and geology to narrow down the lead draw between friend and foe. With tracks such as “Work 3”, “Work 6” and the album’s ender “Track 7”, the narrator’s tone and rhythm can be heard effortlessly matching the charm and vibration of a sun setting and also rising someplace far away. Neither country nor city, a startling figure suddenly emerges from the chocked dust of heroes and villains to make a rare and ambiguous appearance before Father Time and his children of grim laughter carry him away in that ole pine wood bed where dreams run deep. Set for release in mid July on the California based label Sun Cru, “Wes Tirey Sings Selected Works of Billy the Kid” is a sincere testament to Tirey’s taste as well as his abilities to conjure spirits twice removed from the past, present and distant future of history as we know it.
