Artist: Webb Wilder
Album: Night Without Love
Label: Landslide Records
Release Date: 4.10.20
It is possible to judge Night Without Love by its cool retro cover. Flournoy Holmes, who designed the Allman Brothers’ Eat a Peach album art, dug deep into his bag of tricks for Webb Wilder’s 11th album, masterfully recreating the kitschy look of a pulp romance comic from yesteryear, as a young woman in tears sees the love of her life in the arms of another. The graphic elements on the back are more outlandishly funny, advertising Wilder’s all-knowing advice for the lovelorn in his “Original Big Book of Love,” said to be packed with over 1,000 photos and “ … a step by step how to guide so you can learn my greatest secrets.” If only there were such a thing.
Split almost in half between a handful of covers and Wilder originals, most co-written with others, Night Without Love is just as wondrously whimsical and detailed as its packaging. Whistling through a bittersweet version of the melodic, mid-tempo title track, a creation of Wilder’s old co-conspirator Russell Smith of the Amazing Rhythm Aces, Wilder evokes a kind of jaunty, carefree Americana—the soft pedal steel flashing lights of Bob Williams tangled up in his mandola filigree—that belies the longing of its lyrics. When he hears exotic, rumbling tribal rhythms grow louder and chants, “I’ve heard the drums that pound in the night,” Wilder turns into a tortured, heartsick insomniac. More of a full-blown, ’60s garage-rock love shack, the bluesy, stomping reimagining of Tommy Tucker’s “Hi Heel Sneakers” emits smoke rings of Farfisa organ from Micha Hulscher, whereas Wilder transforms the tough English pub-rock of The Inmates’ “Tell Me What’s Wrong” into a swaggering rockabilly session of couples therapy.
Celebrated as an electrifying, roots-rock daredevil, Wilder is also capable of slowly immersing a song like Chip Taylor’s “Holdin’ On To Myself” in satisfying, twangy drips of country gold sadness and negotiating a softly incandescent “Sweetheart Deal” with rich Muscle Shoals soulfulness and sparkle. Dan Penn, co-creator “The Dark End of the Street” and “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man” with Chips Moman, assisted Wilder with the writing of the latter.
Help in instrumentally bringing the pristine Night Without Love to life arrived from all corners, as multi-instrumentalist George Bradfute played just about everything under the sun, including cello, violin, viola and mandocello, keyboards, saxophone and clarinet, and an assortment of guitars. The LP was recorded at Bradfute’s Tone Chapparal studio close to Nashville, and his artful fingerprints are all over Night Without Love, as are those of Hulscher, Williams, bassist Tom Comet and drummers Jimmy Lester and Rich Schell. And then there’s Richard Bennett, who takes a nimble solo turn on gut string guitar in Wilder’s tender acoustic reading of “Be Still,” a lithe, Spanish beauty originally woven by Los Lobos’ David Hidalgo and Louis Perez.
Nothing, however, compares to the open-hearted epic “The Big Deal,” with its swaying fields of strings and expansive, natural wonder, as Wilder slashes through the jungle of human relationships with a machete to find simple truths. Discovering good hooks might be easier. Wilder and former bandmates Fields and Suzy Elkins, from the 1980s Texas tornado The Drapes, uncovered a cache of them in the country-pop whirlwind “Buried Our Love,” a catchy, jangly little number with British Invasion ancestry. Wilder always seems to have a stash of them on hand. That must be a comfort on a Night Without Love.
—Peter Lindblad
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