Rather than entering psycho-analysis Hayes Carll made an album. We’re Only Human spends a lot of time looking at life, trying to find answers. Along the way he came up with 10 songs that speak to the human condition and to the problems of being trying to be alive in the modern world. These days that isn’t easy.
While his songs tend to have a certain country vibe, Carll finds sounds that don’t hew to the norm of your typical country tune. Whether it’s the Randy Newman-esque tinged ‘Good People (Thank Me)’, where ragtime horns and clarinet seem to lead it down less than traditional pathways, or the guitar on ‘I Got Away With It’, shaded and shook, trembling at one moment, charged the next. ‘High’ features fiddle that leans into the country vibe, while the vibraphone leans far in the opposite direction. Nothing is exactly as it seems.
Carll’s lyrics illustrate a range of emotional experience simultaneously. ‘High’ while talking about being in an almost perfect state of elevation also deals with how the human condition often leads to experiencing just the opposite. “Sometimes this ol’ world scares me to death/ Steals my joy until there’s nothing left/ Covers up the light and knocks out all my brеath/ And sometimes this ol’ world just scares me to death.”
Leavening his wisdom with wit, Carll examines the human condition with a jaundiced eye. “The peace in the East, is comin’ unraveled/ There’s rust on the tractors, and dust in the saddle/ We all make big money on bitcoin and cattle/ And it’s all for the progress of man.” The American ideal ain’t what it used to be, and it’s hard to disagree with the sentiment that “the world is being turned on by assholes.”
The parade of longtime friends who sing on the album’s final track, ‘May I Never’ includes Ray Wylie Hubbard, Shovels & Rope, Darrell Scott, Nicole Atkins, and The Band of Heathens’ Gordy Quist and Ed Jurdi. They each take a verse, reinforcing Carll’s plea to himself to keep after the good in life. It’s the kind of reminder that never really goes out of fashion.
It seems wrong to classify We’re Only Human as country music. Since the days of Wille and Waylon, Austin has been the home to a brand of music all its own, more experimental than the homogenised Nashville sound. Hayes Carll is firmly a part of that tradition, where musical roots have been shaped and formed by new generations no longer content being limited by old stylistic generalities. This is the sound of a man ready to take on the world simply by taking care of himself.