Angle of Repose, the fifth solo record from Bay Area songwriter Blaine Todd, unfolds as a sequence of nine plainspoken and pared back transmissions from the uneasy edge of country music. Acoustic guitar, pedal steel, lonesome horns and fiddle wrap around these brief sketches of runners and restless figures moving through landscapes both psychic and geographic. Here are highway hymns of people who sense what must be done but seldom find the conviction to do it, sliding slowly downhill in search of a temporary resting point.
Todd’s writing favors a kind of shrugging candor: jokes and idioms used as vessels for some bleaker truth. The world these songs inhabit is often stark, though not without romance — a place where insight comes easily while resolve remains elusive.
Angle of Repose is less like a collection of songs than a stretch of road, punctuated by a sequence of vacant roadside motels offering short-sighted salvation.
