‘Gas Station Blues #1’, the opening track of Spencer Thomas Smith‘s Gas Station Blue, plays like something between John Prine and Conor Oberst, the vocals almost spoken into the languid, earthy sound. It’s as if the Tennessee-born, North Carolina-based songwriter is recollecting something while watching slow hours pass, sometimes hesitating or drifting off as though some aspect of the memory has hit anew, threatening to send him inward on some new course of introspection. The title track arrives with a fresher rhythm, though the tone is still decidedly nostalgic. A style so caught up in the past its dreams are coloured by it too. “Let’s make love, let’s make up,” he sings, “all we can do is make love up.”
This sense of reflection is inherent across the album, as is the manner in which it shapes ideas of the future too. As though everything exists as both an opening and aftermath, and every end carries the implicit possibility of undoing itself. Be it in morose build of ‘How Silly’ or warm promise of ‘Satellites’, or indeed the vulnerability of ‘Happy’. The sense of constantly working through something which has happened while never losing hope some new dawn is about to break.
“A slow-burning meditation on leaving a place you have come to love which finds itself caught between melancholic reminiscence, a fear of the unknown and the persistent hope latent within every instance of change,” as we wrote of ‘Little Apartment’ in a preview, which incidentally turns out as a pretty apt description of Gas Station Blue as a whole. “But what really stands out,” we continued, “is Spencer Thomas Smith’s patience amid such a swirl of emotions. A sense of compassion and fondness which outlives any present uncertainty.”
And all I can ever give you
is something you can only see inside
so take your time, the water’s fine
shake the blues off one by one
I’ll be here when you wake up
Gas Station Blue is out now and available from the usual places.