Dave Alvin: Ashgrove : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

It's been six years since Alvin's last album of original material, and from the sound of Ashgrove, they've been long and tough ones. Reaching back for a past that doesn't exist, dying parents, dead-end lives, the anchorlessness of life on the road, the stop-the-clock fear of aging -- those themes are all over this album, delivered by Alvin's twixt-a-husk-'n'-a-croak voice. In places, it sounds rather like a rootsier Bruce Springsteen, in one of the Boss's more downbeat moods. Middle-aged rockers addressing middle-aged themes can be an honorable pursuit, but there's a resigned despondency that can make an entire album of such material a burdensome listen. Alvin does at least execute his laments with more grittiness than many of the storytelling country, folk and heartland rock musicians mining similar territory, taking a satisfying blink-and-you'll miss it swipe at organized religion in the best song, "Everett Ruess."