Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band Delight in Spite of New Threats From the Soul

Measuring the distance between reality and fantasy isn’t new to Davis’ songwriting, nor is the practice’s futility: “There is no currency in what could have been, and it torments you,” he wrote two years ago on his and the Roadhouse Band’s debut, Dancing on the Edge. But New Threats From the Soul doesn’t feel remotely like a retread, largely thanks to how far Davis pushes his limits of language in attempting to express his knottiest feelings. His prose is so unruly and bizarre—who else could’ve come up with a line like “twirlin’ like a sex tape in a microwave”?—and, at a line-by-line level, as consistently rewarding as a lottery machine that spits out only winning tickets. (I’m convinced that if you fed him any odd combination of words, he’d work them into a funnier, stranger, and sadder arrangement than you could ever imagine—and, astoundingly, it’d rhyme with the next.) The songs on New Threats From the Soul may initially seem daunting because of their textual density and lengthy runtimes (spanning from roughly six to 12 minutes, give or take), but as Davis fires off knockout aphorisms at a Dylan-esque clip, you’ll likely find yourself wishing they never end.

Despite the meticulousness of Davis’ syntax, his tendency to revisit certain words and phrases allows his trains of thought to unfurl organically in accordance with his ruminative lyrics, so that listening can feel like striding forward and stumbling backward through the stages of grief right alongside him. It may warrant upwards of a dozen run-throughs to unravel all the narrative threads stitched within and across these songs, but the music easily gets you to those play counts. Accentuating the approachability of Davis’ wise-cracking barfly persona, buoyant melodies, twangy guitars, and vigorous harmonies make the consecutive, relatively brisk highlights “Better If You Make Me” and the Will Oldham-featuring “The Simple Joy” feel tailor-made to late-night singalongs with close confidants.

But make no mistake: Davis’ musical ambitions eclipse those of your local bearded rocker, far and away. In a similar vein as experimental-pop auteurs and fellow alt-country oddballs, like the Magnetic Fields’ Stephin Merritt or This is Lorelei’s Nate Amos, Davis fleshes out compositions with a grab-bag variety of sounds ranging from orchestral strings and pirouetting flutes to cups and cans, as well as theatrical flourishes (the title track’s jaunty finger-snaps, what credits refer to as “gang vocals” on “Monte Carlo / No Limits”) that play up both the self-effacing humor and deceptively rich pathos of his mundane, darkly comic mise en scènes. To hear symphonic strings sweep into a song admitting to passing sleepless nights by “doing push-ups and cheating at Solitaire” is strangely deeply validating.

As engaging as these arrangements are independently, what makes New Threats From the Soul even more breathtaking is that Davis often seems to have approached them as direct extensions of his lyrics, or as a means of expressing what little his words can’t. Structure and genre collapse more frequently here than on Dancing on the Edge, so that the music can seem as emotionally unstable and rudderless as Davis’ narrator. At the same time, every switch-up appears to have been painstakingly choreographed in response to Davis’ lyrics: On the title track, when Davis begs for “someone to quiet down these deafening threats from the soul,” blaring horns suddenly puncture the mix; the unexpected beat drop on the fever dream-ish “Mutilation Springs” hits like a gulp of the Bloody Mary he’s either sipping or hungover from; amid the epileptic fits of drum ’n’ bass interludes in “Monte Carlo / No Limits” (which could soundtrack the frantic final lap of a rural Mario Kart course), a furiously-played violin reenacts the finger-picked riff that had previously announced the song.

Investing the time and focus necessary to clock these and other unions of form and content yields a listening experience that’s equally revelatory and immersive. Close your eyes and you’ll witness Davis’ stories come to life in full-color. When David Berman—the late Silver Jews and Purple Mountains frontman, to whom Davis is often compared for his spates of witty, casually crushing bars and world-weary croak—sang that “songs build little rooms in time,” I think these are the lot he was talking about. All the bizarre detours ultimately lead to “Crass Shadows (at Walden Pawn),” a sunset-hued finale that feels ecstatic despite the lyrics pointing to an uncertain future (“I don’t know what’s in store, but I know I need a store with a plan” goes one clever line; the record ends on an ellipsis, with Davis “waiting on an assignment from the spirit world”). If Ryan Davis’ narrator hasn’t yet determined the right course to pursue, perhaps his triumph on New Threats From the Soul compares to the nature of a pawn shop: rummaging through his junk-drawer heart and laying out its contents for someone who’ll find their value. Two years ago, towards the end of Dancing on the Edge, he sang, “Together we sing in search of what the hurtin’s about.” And how wonderful it is to keep searching alongside him.

Anna Pichler has written for Paste since 2024, and she interned for the music section in the spring of 2025. When she’s not writing about music, she’s working towards an undergraduate degree in English literature at The Ohio State University. Keep up with her work on X @_Anna_pichler_ and Bluesky @annapichler.bsky.social.