Now recording as Doc Feldman & the Alt + Cntry + Delete, Feldman returned this spring with a brand new record, A Healthy Dose of Anxiety, on Shaker Steps Records. With more of a full band set up, the album sees a continuation of the inventive spirit that marked the debut, further developing the dark Americana sound by branching out into psych and seventies rock. The result is something far richer but no less evocative, a sound capable of presenting sadness, bitterness and love in one heady hit.

Take ‘Screwed’, its sleek and sinuous retro tones offering a real counterpoint to Feldman’s distinctively brooding vocals, a deceptively laidback shuffle over which his vocals emerge impassioned and caustic. “Ain’t it just like life to put the screws to you?” goes the opening line, “As if you aren’t already screwed? / I’m still trying to find that line between losing my shirt and losing my mind.” This is the mood of A Healthy Dose of Anxiety. A piercing sorrow with the way things are, a tangible fury that it was allowed to ever be. A deep desire for action yet a nagging inability to enact change. This is typified by ‘Heavy Edges’, which sets its sights on directly on whatever stage of capitalism we’re calling this now.

Of course your left hand don’t know what your rights been doing
Who’d want to see such feats of inequality?
So don’t pretend to want to deliver on your promises of deliverance
when all you do is keep feeding the machine

But where there is feeling, there is still hope. The bluesy swagger of ‘Receiving (for Rollo May)’ passes through desperation and loneliness via dogged determination, while folk rock hymn ‘Help Never Comes from Above’ reworks the cynicism of the title into a celebration of other possibilities. Progressing with what might at first seem like pessimism, decrying magic spells and empty prayers, the song repurposes such disillusionment into human solidarity. Clasping hands not in plea to God but to pull another out of the shit. If we have control over anything, it is what happens here around us. “Help never comes from above,” Feldman sings, “and if it does give thanks for the grace of earthly love.”

For all of the record’s dissatisfaction, Doc Feldman repeatedly finds this other side of the deal. Not an answer as such, but at least a direction in which to channel one’s energies. Be it the wistful warmth of piano-led ‘San Antonio Missions’ or the bright rhythm of ‘Straight Talk / Fully Wired’, A Healthy Dose of Anxiety transcends the bleak world in which it lives through sheer grit and determination. Succumbing not to easy fantasies but the call of hard, imperfect work. A willingness to stare down the worst of things, find motivation there. “I’m just hoping the pain can be a driving force,” he sings on the latter. “For our solutions to find their course.”

A Healthy Dose of Anxiety is out now and available from the Doc Feldman & the Alt + Cntry + Delete Bandcamp page.

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The album opens with ‘58’, a slight departure from Squires’s previous work in as much as it’s more of a full band effort, drums and bass adding depth to his usual lonely acoustic sound. A touching reference to his late mother, the track takes an interesting post-Christian approach to death, the words addressing the lost loved one directly, while also admitting, “I know you cannot hear me now / when you are is far away at the speed of sound / and I’m always reminded that everything is on its way to another place”. The song explores that middle ground between no longer believing our forefathers’ versions of faith and spirituality, and not being quite ready to give up on a world beyond our own.

More akin to the songs on Shadows, ‘Water Signs’ is a heartfelt slo-mo country track that introduces another of the album’s main themes―an ill-fated and mutually destructive relationship governed by struggles with addiction. If ‘Water Signs’ is all desperate declarations of love and final curtain calls, ‘Fall On Me’ exists in a hushed and anxious aftermath, Squires joined by Field Report’s Shane Leonard on drums, bass and synth.

“There’s an eerie glow
when the TV casts a light through the haunted house
When I lie awake at night and I think about too many things
I wish I could call you when my mind is stirring”

Many of these songs are at least partially autobiographical, and this authenticity is the standout quality of Squires’s songwriting, every line able to ring true with a kind of resigned and wistful acceptance. It’s the sound of a man who has lived through a lot, and who may still not have all the answers but is at least getting better at anticipating the questions.

‘Night Cars’ is a standout track, a beautifully ruminative folk song where the guitar gathering in intensity as Heather McEntire (of Mount Moriah) joins vocal duties. The track deals with what Squires describes as the “trial and tribulation in this worn-out heart,” a frustrated weariness in watching a loved one succumb again and again. ‘Remnants’ is enclosed with claustrophobic religious imagery (“Children play where you lay / near a permanent stain / on the wall hangs a cross / that don’t keep all your demons away”), while ‘Where the Devil Sings’ is sour with poison, a madness-induced by living with addiction and trying to support its victim. ‘Leave-Taking’ sees the relationship finally end (“Well I knew you’d leave right from the start / but when it comes around it still breaks your heart”), before the closing track, ‘Secrets I Can Keep’, sees out the record. The song is infused with a wistful sense of acceptance, built entirely from gentle guitar, slowly winding pedal steel and Squires’s vocals.

“I don’t wanna let you go
and i don’t wanna watch you stumble
I don’t wanna talk about it anymore
all their wasted time
waiting for tomorrow”

Collapse is perhaps most remarkable for its final message. It’s one thing to make an album suffused with genuine emotion, tales of heartbreak and suffering, but another thing entirely to see it through to the light at the end of the tunnel, the idea that things can and will get better if you can hold tight and keep on going. So while, as the first song hints, contemporary country/folk songs might not be as sold on the idea of God as those of the past, Collapse is Jeremy Squires showing us there are religious experiences to be found everywhere. Be this through God or not, in times of struggle or in quiet, everyday, small-town existence. Society may be changing but ideas of love, forgiveness, and ultimately redemption are not unobtainable. As Squires wrote in an email about the album, “This album is about overcoming in general, coping with loss, persevering and becoming whole again.” It’s this sense of hope that sets him apart from many of his peers. It’s (relatively) easy to write sad songs for listeners to wallow in, but in offering the possibility of change and recovery, Collapse feels not just unusual but important.

You can order it now on CD and digital download from the Jeremy Squires Bandcamp page.

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