Quinn DeVeaux - 'Leisure'

Quinn DeVeaux’s latest album Leisure finds the singer-songwriter continue to refine his soul while injecting his work with new elements. Here are familiar DeVeaux calling cards: the appropriately swampy New Orleans funk of “Bayou,” “You Got Soul”’s joyous gospel vamp, and the epic ballad “Give Love a Try,” a sure-bet future live showstopper. But Leisure also revels in a broader palette as seen in “Evil Woman”’s organ vs. synclavier showdown and the smoky 50s lounge vibe of “Many Days” before horns launch the tune into Ennio Morricone terrain. The album’s most compelling moments, however, are found in DeVeaux’s restless songwriting, which explores new stylistic lanes and takes on weightier themes. Revealing some of that Nashville influence, the timeless “Endless Sea” is stately master-crafted countrypolitan. And “USA” digs into Quinn’s midwestern story with evocative precision: “wake up early on a Sunday morning, put on a cotton suit / I didn’t mind the songs we sang, but preachin’ I could never do” before resigning to “bow my head and roll my eyes - oh, USA.”  This winking, ultimately loving tribute to America is elsewhere undercut by the shattering quiet reflection “Holiday,” which probes decades of racial violence from its opening couplet “I can’t forget the face of Emmett Till / And all the faces they take from us still.” Taken together, Leisure’s varied, assured, and personal tracks are as complicated as America itself. A consummate artist, Quinn DeVeaux traverses his country’s joy, faith, and pain to create beauty forged in tradition and burnished with new spirit.