"Sometimes the best that you can do / is hold on to the deepest part of you." Michigan-based singer-songwriter Ed Dupas follows up his well-received 2015 Americana debut, A Good American Life, with an album that with subtle use of light and shade reveals the still vivid bruises of love gone wrong in a world gone mad.
If his debut had sceptical political overtones, not least characterised by the ironic title track, these 11 tracks tease out more personal turmoil, as on Do It For Me or the closing Hold Me Tight, both intense and understated. The politics are less overt. Promised Land reflects a sense of disillusion while the raucous opener Too Big to Fail makes his position clear: "We see it growing darker every day."
Dupas may walk in the footsteps of Steve Earle but he is gradually finding his own way.
