It’s well-nigh impossible for music critics to describe James McMurtry’s three decades of songwriting without using the word “Americana.” That’s because it’s hard to think of a musician better able to craft albums that employ roots rock, folk, country, and blues in the service of sad, stoic stories about work, love, and loss.
McMurtry, now 53, has done it many times over, and Complicated Game — his twelfth album, and his first since 2008’s Just Us Kids — thrums with character and grit. This hour-long LP is full to brimming with well-crafted heartland rock, and listeners can’t help but feel that McMurtry himself is in the room with them, like a visiting relative who only gets more interesting with time.
Relaxing into a well-matured sound and dishing out musings on mortality and the working man, McMurtry has never sounded more at home in his music. It shows not only in the songwriting but in the simple, elegant arrangements and virtually flawless production (he is working here for the first time with producers C.C. Adcock and Mike Napolitano).
The final mix teases out surprising layers and textures even as it keeps the spotlight squarely on our main troubadour and his guitar. The opening track, “Copper Canteen,” is a perfect example: it begins with a low mutter of “one, two, three, four,” then slowly builds banjo licks onto guitar and, later, a swelling string section to bolster McMurtry’s vocals, which slide from Dylanesque liquid twang into growling Springsteen baritone and back again.
Later tracks go further afield: doo-wop backing vocals drop in on “She Loves Me,” “Deaver’s Crossing” is stepped in Appalachian folk riffs, and “Long Island Sound” floats on slow waves of Irish fiddle. Sometimes McMurtry’s performance is as straightforward as Johnny Cash’s necktie, like on “Forgotten Coast.” Then he jumps from slow ballads to uptempo rock-outs, like on “How’m I Gonna Find You Now,” a snarling foot-stomper with spurts of fuzzy guitar.
But the lyrics are what really draw us in. Complicated Game shares as much DNA with a book of short stories as it does with a rock album. That should be no surprise by now — not only has McMurtry been honing his storytelling skills since the mid-80s, but he is the son of novelist Larry McMurtry (author of the western Lonesome Dove, among other books).
“The lyrical theme is mostly about relationships,” says the junior McMurtry in his latest press release. “It’s also a little about the big old world versus the poor little farmer or fisherman.” Complicated Game finds great nuance in these topics and others, like camaraderie (“Carlisle’s Haul”), transience (“Ain’t Got A Place”), wartime (“South Dakota”), motel loneliness (“Cutter”), and love among college kids (“You Got To Me”).
Fellow rocker Steve Earle, who liked to think of himself as a conduit to bigger things, once said that “if I can get Me out of the way, I can do anything.” And McMurtry makes similar claims sometimes, like in the song “She Loves Me,” when he sings: “I’m not writing the screenplay/ It’s writing me.”
But modesty doesn’t fool us. He’s been everywhere, man — McMurtry grew up in Texas, Virginia, Arizona, and Alaska — and even though he’s based in Austin now, his palette can paint any landscape. A complicated game, maybe, but the effect is still deep and serene.
