Riley Downing has released Landfill Poetry, and the title is literal. Before the New Orleans collective The Deslondes and the collaborations that followed, Downing worked as a garbage man in rural Missouri while trying to become a full-time musician. The album goes back to that stretch and asks what being poor and being judged for it actually felt like.
That framing is the difference between this record and the poverty stories that get told in country music every year. Saving Country Music, reviewing it, drew the distinction plainly: plenty of people claim they lived in a car for the character it confers, and Downing simply did the job. The review scored the album 8.3 out of 10 and called it a career-defining effort rather than a side project.
The voice is the instrument the record is built around. Downing's deep, unhurried delivery has been used as texture across other people's songs for years; here the arrangements are keyed to it. The review singled out how "Hurt To Fall" and "Last Day of Mardi Gras" end, hanging on final notes with no accompaniment underneath.
Downing worked closely with producers Andrija Tokic and Grant D'Aubin, along with fellow Deslondes member John James Tourville, on both the arrangements and the writing. The result reads as more straightforwardly country than The Deslondes usually are, though the New Orleans textures stay in the mix rather than being scrubbed out.
The songs work as vignettes. "Country Fool" is self-deprecating enough to sound like a joke and turns into a character study. "Helen & Gene" brings two intertwined lives to life in a few verses. "Night Shift" is an anthem to the working man. "Polecat Holler" is a twangy ditty, and "Porch Song" catches a lived moment without dressing it up.
The label is its own kind of rhyme. Landfill Poetry comes out on Oh Boy Records, founded by John Prine, who started out as the singing mailman before Roger Ebert found him. Prine got to quit the day job, and so did Downing. The album is filed under country, and its date sits with the rest of the schedule on the release calendar. Prine's own catalogue has kept turning up this year, including unreleased songs surfacing on new projects, and the record lands in a run of Americana releases that also took in Tucker Wetmore explaining why he put out a summer mixtape instead of an album.
The facts
- Landfill Poetry is released through John Prine's Oh Boy Records.
- Riley Downing is a founding member of The Deslondes.
- He worked as a garbage man in rural Missouri before music.
- Producers were Andrija Tokic, Grant D'Aubin and John James Tourville.
- Saving Country Music scored the album 8.3 out of 10.
- Tracks include Country Fool, Helen & Gene, Night Shift and Porch Song.
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