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Prodigious Chicago folksinger makes it look effortless
Some things can be learned: how to pick a few chords on the guitar, how to shut your eyes while you sing, how to wince just so during the bridge to convey emotional weight. But unless your surname is Dylan, Waits, Ritter or Prine, you could face-palm yourself to death trying to pen songs half as inspired as the 10 tracks on Joe Pug’s debut full-length. Before moving to Chicago and writing his first songs, the 25-year-old folk phenom studied playwriting at the University of North Carolina; he dropped out, but he never quit honing his empathetic imagination.
On “Bury Me Far (From My Uniform),” Pug sings in his pleading, nasally drawl, “War is older than mankind, but it’s younger than grace … Won’t you bury me far from my uniform / So God might remember my face?” You could craft a more effective anti-war song, but it would probably involve plagiarizing Wilfred Owen’s WWI poetry. Throughout Messenger, Pug demonstrates his understanding that life is full of battlefields, and that injuries sustained on the fiercest one of all—our endlessly bombarded, shrapnel-pierced hearts—only have one cure: more pedal steel.
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As a huge fan of Pug's Nation of Heat EP, I was very disappointed with Messenger.
I have thoroughly enjoyed both of Pug's EPs immensely, and he shows on this album that he is not afraid to blaze new territory. Messenger is multi-layered and even goes electric and I've found it to be a deeply satisfying work on repeat listens. After seeing him live in concert recently, there's no doubt that he has the goods to be around for a long time...
I was also a big fan of his (free) Eps, and was disappointed with this album. But I don't think its a bad album, just more country sounding than before. At least a different, less appealing sound to me.
Immense respect for him and his songs nonetheless! He is great with words...
The album's only error is magnified by it being upfront. The title track, which leads off the album, is a good song, but the production sounds like a gang of Nashville types got their fangs in to Joe along with their requisite banality. From that point on, though, this is a vintage Pug masterpiece...."Sharpest Crown", "How Good You Are", "First Time I Saw You"....it's one great song after another. The new electric version of "Speak Plainly Diana" positively rips.