Reviews

Artist:The Kennedys
Album: Headwinds
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 13
Website: https://www.kennedysmusic.com/

It's been five years since the Tarrytown, NY-based folk-rock duo Pete and Maura Kennedy released an album of all new original songs in five years, three of which were taken up with lockdown live streaming. The metaphorical title arising from a conversation on the beach about emerging from the twin crises of the pandemic and political chaos, on both a personal and national level, and encountering headwinds as they cycled back home, forcing them pedal twice as hard, it opens with Maura's call for a 'New Set Of Wheels' (the only track on which they don't play everything, Vince Santoro handling drum duties), an appropriately motoring track that musically calls to mind The Eagles' 'Take It Easy' if they were fronted by Lucinda Williams and driving a hybrid, with Maura "a woman on a mission in my fuel-efficient automobile".

They take the foot off the throttle for 'Late September Breeze', an autumnal slow walking post break-up reflection cast in Kristofferson folksy colours ("Only souvenirs remind me of old memories/And I work to tape a photograph/Your head thrown back in laughter I can almost hear... but you know I'd really rather be just anywhere/Anywhere I can forget you're out there/Chasing down a late September breeze") and wistful resonant guitar and lap steel solos.

The first co-write comes with 'Silence Is A Warning', a twangy intro setting the rhythm to a number that, using birdsong as a touchstone, draws on the foreboding of the calm before the storm ("The sounds I long to hear/Should be ringing in my ear but now they're silent/
The melody is near/But it's tangled in the fear of something violent"), followed by Maura's old school country (think Tammy, Loretta) title track that takes her cycling experience and turns it into a regret of a lost relationship ("I'm aimless without your touch/And I regret that day I threw it all away/And I miss you oh so much/And if I knew how, I'd undo it somehow/'Til then I'm condemned to roam/'Cause headwinds make it hard to get back home").

The second shared credit comes with further dark portents ("I thought I felt the pressure drop, I went outside to take a walk/With my umbrella on my arm and a fear I cannot name… I haven't seen the sun for weeks/I've lost the color on my cheeks /And all the trees are turning brown, though summer's barely here/There ought to be a flower bed, a wreath of roses for my head/My garden growing things to eat, but nothing's growing there") in the more rock-edged 'The Sky Doesn't Look Right' with its underlying eco post-apocalypse notes ("They say there used to be a sun, that rose and shone on everyone/But that was back before the bomb and the shroud that followed down /They say there once was happiness, a gentle smile, a warm caress/But now we just survive as best we can on poisoned ground").

Switching the gender in the refrain of Dylan's 'Time Out Of Mind' outtake ' 'Red River Shore', the album's longest track (which is also anchored by Dylan's trademark 60s organ swirl) is 'The Boy From The East River Shore', a narrative unfolding the tragic fate on an immigrant's son, trapped by neighbourhood gang culture ("They showed him how to use a knife/They said you answer to us from now on/Betrayal will mean your life") with its inevitable results as the lovers try and break free.

Despite its musically bright and upbeat ukulele framework and jugband feel, 'Little Green Bottles' is another number about environmental damage, here the pollution of the oceans ("the train is loaded three days a week/And the men in charge pile it all on a barge/And send it out to sea") that washes up back on the shore, switching to more of a gospel sound for 'The Woods And The Wild'. The first of Pete's two contributions it's a number about faith restored by the beauty of nature, while his second, the two-minute 'Yolanda' is a soft samba rhythm sway in honour of a departed friend ("I'm gonna miss those big brown eyes/
Yolanda, I always knew that they were wise/And when we laughed and cried/You were always by my side").

Latin rhythms also carry Maura's bustling 'Tangerine', a number she describes as a "squiggly lovesong to a delicious piece of fruit!", before, another joint composition, 'Sacramento' heads off on a lap steel train for into shuffling Western Swing territory for a whimsical tribute to the city's Bootleg Tiki Lounge, a live music venue where "You can settle in the backyard and listen with her friends/To the music that's a-playing by the band against the fence".

The last of Maura's numbers, the steel-stained keening 'Donna', is another tribute to a friend ("Donna, there's so much you can't control/But you're the ruler of your heart and soul/With every bit of kindness you offset a little hate/You never really know how much of a difference you make/But you do when you show a little kindness") and the belief in human compassion in the face of division and conflict. It ends on a related note with a return to twangsome guitar on the co-written 'Waging Peace', a simple folksy anthem channelling the spirt of Malvina Reynolds as Maura asks "How many more must die 'til we begin waging peace?" with a call to "Stand up straight and break out of that line".

A mix of the playful and the potent, it's a welcome return to the stage (metaphorically and literally) that serves reminder that they're up there with the very best of their kind.

Mike Davies

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