Artist:     Shane Alexander

Album:     A Life Like Ours

Label:     Buddah Records/Rainwater Records

Release Date:     9.20.19

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With all apologies to literary giant Oscar Wilde, the importance of being earnest is not lost on contemporary folk dream weaver Shane Alexander. Tired of directing his own vitriol squarely at those forces responsible for the nightmare that is American politics, Alexander—a longstanding Buddhist— with genuine and heartfelt sincerity, calmly argues for unity and peace throughout A Life Like Ours, his seventh album.

If skeptics are turned off at its naked sentimentality and naivete, maybe its enlightened attitudes and general graciousness would melt their cold hearts. There’s something pure and good about the soft and gentle “I’ll Be Here,” its unconditionally supportive words a warm comfort in these ugly, vicious times. The moving pro-gun control ballad was conceived in the aftermath of the Las Vegas mass shooting and was featured on the ABC show “The Rookie.” Other pleas are just as affecting, as Alexander’s masterfully understated acoustic fingerstyle guitar soothes on such somber and austere, but still lovely, meditations as the enticing “Everything As One,” a cautiously optimistic and imaginative “Evermore” and the cloudy title track, where Chris Pierce’s harmonica delicately pierces its beautiful veil of melancholy and Alexander talks of a “return to where we came from” and adds “we’re just particles of stars.”

Wounds are reopened on “Fault Line,” another in a long line of hushed folk sketches recalling Nick Drake or Jeff Buckley on A Life Like Ours, where slightly shifting melodies breeze through chilled, autumnal atmospheres and wistful hooks pull you close. This time the subject is relationships and their fragility, made all the more bittersweet by Aubrey Richards’ mournful fiddle. More surprising and satisfying is the yearning alternative-country discovery “Taxi Cab,” which assumes the pleasing shapes of Jackson Browne’s best work, but it’s his mostly faithful rendition of The Moody Blues’ “Nights in White Satin,” which cinematically morphs into a whistling Spaghetti Western pilgrimage to pay homage to Ennio Morricone, spreading out like a big sky and triggers a sense of wonder and adventure in listeners. Ted Russell Kamp’s bass movements both anchor and prod A Life Like Ours with subtlety and feel, just as Kamp does with Shooter Jennings’ work. Carl Byron, known for his work with Jim Lauderdale, adds touches of piano, accordion and keys that charm. They color and fill Alexander’s skeletal song structures, adding richness and direction. A Life Like Ours is precious, indeed.

—Peter Lindblad