Humorous and elegant search for simplicity

There’s an unusual song early on Langhorne Slim’s new album Lost At Last Vol. 1 called “Old Things.” Over spare acoustic guitar and mandolin, it describes little more than its narrator’s innocent curiosity towards and regard for items generally past their prime. “Old cars don’t go too fast / Old dogs lying on the grass / old houses full of ghosts / Ooo I love old things the most.” A sort of spiritual descendant of Paul McCartney’s “Junk” that does not employ as ghastly a phrase as “sentimental jamboree,” “Old Things” describes a pure and simplistic pleasure quietly at odds with the modern impulse for overstimulation. Although there isn’t really another song like it, it serves as a microcosm for the breezy, unassuming, and delightful Lost At Last Vol. 1.

Langhorne Slim’s songs sometimes feel like artifacts themselves. Employing the lost art of brevity, earthy folk arrangements and classic structures derived from all corners of American roots music, he seems at times like a particularly eccentric and maybe soothsaying Alan Lomax discovery. Soothsaying because in spite of his musical classicism, Slim displays an emphatically contemporary and sometimes gonzo lyrical touch.

“Can we be happy for a while?” he ponders on “Life Is Confusing,” adding, “Can we just sit here, shut up and smile?” It’s a rare and barbed plea for contentment that will be interpreted differently by different sets of ears in these charged times, but you have to admire Slim’s advocacy for personal peace, forced or not. After he acknowledges in the chorus that “Life is confusing and people are insane,” though, you get a sense that even he knows his hope may be in vain.

Slim’s words, like his voice, are plaintive – he clearly does not aspire to showiness of any sort, endeavoring instead for a plainspoken relatability and avoidance of pretension that perhaps inadvertently leads him to profundity. The jaunty romp “Ocean City (For May, Jack & Brother Jon)” details an idyllic land of memory, with the effects of time’s passage left unsaid. Although he seems to describe personal experiences, it is hard not to feel moved by Slim’s warm reminiscence, left dreaming of your own memories, your own Ocean City.

It is not his only moment of uncut sentiment on the album. “Funny Feelin’ (For Junior Kimbrough and Ted Hawkins)” is a pleasant ditty about the ease with which love arrives in the lives of the unloved; “Better Man” features Slim’s frank admissions of insufficiency alongside his wishes for improvement. “When I call out to my brother / He lend me his hand / When I call out to my mother / She said son, don’t be sad / Life is short, do the best you can / I want to be a better man.” With his rudimentary but considerate rhymes and earnest hope, you can hardly help but be endeared to the singer.

The oddballs are the album’s greatest joys though, and far more representative of Slim’s uniqueness. The folksy, sarcastic “Private Property” describes an apparent bust for growing marijuana and features one of the album’s snarkiest, best lines: “Well it might be a crime but it ain’t no sin / Planting flowers in your garden.” Later, “Zombie,” one of the album’s most jubilant tracks, makes you question whether the undead description of its subject is intended literally or metaphorically, with both interpretations permitting distinct but equally amusing readings of the lyrics. Songs like these reveal an appealing devil-may-care attitude in Slim – a willful embrace of sincerity in whatever form it takes, a tolerance of simplicity and openness to joy. These qualities are present in droves throughout Lost At Last Vol. 1. In music today, they seem like old things.