We’ve all been reminded over the last year that music is a social phenomenon. Musicians love to work together, in the same room, face to face. Most of them love to interact with audiences in the same way, up close and personal and we’ve missed out on that over the last ten months in the UK. But life goes on and we adapt; the conditions aren’t ideal but musicians are collaborating online and still producing great albums and singles. Rick Shea’s twelfth album “Love & Desperation” is one of those collaborations, started under fairly normal conditions in 2019 and completed under COVID conditions in 2020.

The playing throughout is subtle and understated; the album relies more on subtlety and nuance than technical wizardry for its impact (that and a tidy selection of songs across a range of styles, with a few little surprises thrown in) and some interesting song pairings across the album. The fact that Rick has a voice that bears comparison with Merle Haggard might also help a bit. There’s also a suggestion that, after forty years as a musician, Rick might be thinking about his legacy; there’s a hint of that with the inclusion of the moody and atmospheric Mexican noir story “Texas Lawyer”, which closes the album, which appears for the third time on one of Rick’s albums.

So, how about those pairs of songs? Well, “(Down at the Bar at) Gypsy Sally’s” (taking its title from Townes Van Zandt’s “Tecumseh Valley”) and “She Sang of the Earth” look at different diversions, one physical, the other spiritual, but equally temporary. The arrangements echo the themes for each song with a gentle country feel for “She Sang of the Earth” and a more sinister guitar and accordion-led styling for “Gipsy Sally’s”, which instantly evokes the Doors’ “People Are Strange”; and that’s appropriate given the list of characters that populate the song.

“Gipsy Sally’s” neatly ties in with “The World’s Gone Crazy”, tying in the Doors instrumental style to the lyrical style and structure of a gospel song; it’s another example of the album’s eclecticism, from the standard slow blues of “Blues at Midnight” to the mariachi polka of “Juanita (Why Are You So Mean?)”. The musical variety of the songs is matched by the range of lyrical themes from the album. There’s the love song “A Tenderhearted Love”, which Rick felt he owed his wife, the references to the harshness of Nashville in the title song “Nashville Blues”, and the environmental and social concerns of ”Big Rain is Comin’ Mama”.

There’s plenty of love running through this album; love for music, love for family and love for the world and, honestly, very little desperation. If this is Rick Shea’s shot at a career-defining album, then it might just have done the trick.

“Love & Desperation” is released in the UK on Friday February 12^th on Tres Pescadores Records (TPCD-12).

Here’s the video for “The World’s Gone Crazy”: