Review Summary: Self-reflection and introspection on the way home.
No junk, no soul.
We must wrestle with the phrase from time-to-time when our favorite artist(s) take time away from the music system to improve their health and state of mind. This phrase naturally frames the decision of an artist to be sober as a negative impact on their creative output that we adore. That being said, when Even Felker stepped away from Turnpike Troubadours to improve himself, one could easily assume that 2017's
A Long Way from Your Heart was the last that we would hear of the red dirt originals.
Fast forward to 2023, and a blessing was laid at our feet in the form of
A Cat in the Rain. Said shortly, this record fell short (considerably) in comparison to previous output from the Oklahoma group. There was nothing wrong with it, but the metric that we used to evaluate TT's music was far more tedious and stringent than the grading criteria used for less-celebrated artists. "Good" from Turnpike is disappointing when compared to the "great" to "exceptional" that we had grown to expect from records like 2010's
Diamonds and Gasoline or the aforementioned
A Long Way from Your Heart.
With this incomplete explanation as the backdrop, it occurs to me after writing most of what I want to say about this album that I need to start at the end of my review. So allow me the wandering musings that follow.
After sitting with this album for quite a while before writing a word about it, I'd have to say that this record is "coming home" in many ways. It is a return to form for Turnpike as group. This record represents not only their finest work to date, but a homecoming to the sounds they first crafted on Diamonds & Gasoline. It is also a return home for endings, as with "On The Red River", and a return home for beginnings, as on "Heaven Passing Through". "Lonesome for home that I left long ago" as a singular lyric could sum up this album in all the ways outlined and more, but the best way to approach
The Price of Admission is to recognize the final bifurcation of "coming home": the lyrical content and the sonic content.
The Lyrically Exploration of Coming Home
I often see the opening track to an album to be the one-and-only chance for an artist to catch the listener's attention. Subpar opening tracks send the signal that the album is a cobbled-together compilation of songs rather than an intentionally curated piece of long-form content to consume.
"On The Red River" certainly fits the bill for a fantastic opener. There are layers to this song that, as you sit with it more and more, become apparent. The recurring motif of "red July bucks in velvet" describe the beginning of new growth, which is really the reinstantiation of a neverending cycle. This idea works its way into the brilliant, though heartbreaking, tale of a lovable but troubled father that would effectively abandon the narrator to feed his habit, though never "neglecting" the narrator fully.
The closing stanza of "On The Red River" frequently moves me to tears, especially "I guess Saturday started without you...". There are many feelings that this 8 bar bridge inspires: the feeling of returning home, feeling empty and perhaps betrayed by the fact that you yourself abandon this place and it moved on without you. The feeling that you should have spent more time at home. The feeling that while things at home have changed, so have you ("I'd find my last bottle of beer"). The feeling that you must reconcile the past and accept the future, as painful and empty as that future is.
I expound so heavily on this song in particular because: 1. it's an amazing song, and 2. this is the tone setter for the record. All life on this record grows from the core themes that are presented in the overture of
The Price of Admission: family, death, rebirth, and community. The themes fold into heartbreaking ("On The Red River"), heartwarming ("Heaven Passing Through"), bittersweet ("Leaving Town"), and something like empowering ("Be Here", "Nothing You Can Do").
Certain tracks on
TPOA weave together multiple themes, like "Searching For A Light"'s ability to continue the connection of death and family ("I don't know a world without you, but I'm safe in saying / The contrast and the color woulda lost their clarity).
We also get references to home and perhaps one's kin in "Forgiving You", with lines like "Learning in kind, the voice in my mind / Ain't never been mine all along" leading to thoughts of how much of one's self-identity is really a bastardized reconfiguration of one's parents' ideas, ideological framework, and passions.
In contrast to death and questions it inspires, "Heaven Passing Through" sees the heartwarming flip side of fatherhood as Felker describes falling in love and raising a child of his own. Tunes like this one could only be penned with a certain level of trauma and introspection - a level of insight that can only be gained from being dragged through a cold, muddy rut. The hell we go through produces heavenly purity, but only through struggle can we gain it, is how I might sum up "Heaven Passing Through".
"Leaving Town (Woody Guthrie Festival)" harkens back to many Turnpike songs of years gone by, insofar as the exceptional lyricism. Turnpike shines when it comes to descriptive scene-building in rural (or rural-adjacent) settings, and this song is no exception. The line "But here's the window that was painted closed / Let's bust it open while the night's still young" summarizes the feeling that the song is capturing: returning home, being reminded of bittersweet memories that are still having an impact in the present day; but the desire to recapture that youthful feeling by acting as recklessly as the kid you were would.
The Sonic Texture of The Price of Admission
While, clearly, there is much to be said about the lyrical content of
TPOA, there is something to be said regarding instrumentation and how well constructed the arrangements are. To follow the theme of coming home, this record provides more instances of "oh that sounds like Diamonds & Gasoline" than Turnpike has offered in albums past. While the sound of
A Long Way from Your Heart is differentiated and engaging, the return to the musical styles of early-years Turnpike is welcomed with open arms (like the prodigal son, if you will).
Tracks like "Be Here" (which carries the scent of Woody Guthrie) call back to a style first conjured in the Turnpike discography on "Brought Me", but the clapping or call-back vocals land much better on this attempt. The same could be said of "The Devil Plies His Trade", as it calls back to "Before The Devil Knows We're Dead" (both in terms of instrumentation and the primary subject). "A Lie Agreed Upon" certainly calls back to
Diamonds & Gasoline ("The Funeral") in a less exceptional way, but it's counterpart "Leaving Town" provides a sound that is all to familiar to fans of "Gin, Smoke & Lies".
While "Gin, Smoke & Lies" provides a gristly and gritty opener to
Goodbye Normal Street, there is no grit of that variety on
The Price of Admission. "Gin, Smoke & Lies" is you in your early 20s: full of piss and vinegar and ready to fight. "Leaving Town" is both musically and lyrically you in your 30s: subdued, but refined.
"Leaving Town" provides the perfect point to emphasize and reiterate what makes this album exceptional:
refinement.
A Cat in the Rain was a stumble, but
The Price of Admission is a sage jog: no need to sprint to where we're going, let's enjoy it for what it is. It also represents refinement in the theme of "coming home": you don't realize that you miss home til you're gone. It takes experience and growth (read: refinement) to come to the conclusion that going home isn't all that bad. Where you once saw ugly logging roads, you now see familiar and comforting ruts.
You went through hell, and paid the price of admission to get to the better place that you are now.
