Nick Justice - The Road Not Taken  (click on image to watch video)

 27 November 2019

There is something in Nick Justice’s graveled voice and accustomed, unrushed folk strumming that screams classic. Like putting on an old John Prine record or hearing “Sunday Morning Coming Down” from a passing car, The Road Not Taken sounds oddly and satisfyingly familiar. This latest 10 song effort is certainly not reinventing the genre, but that’s the appeal. Justice has managed to put his own sound on a genre that too often comes off as uninspired by newcomers.  

The record kicks off with the strongest track, the languid, hard to forget “Take Me Home,” and the album rarely disappoints from that moment forward. “Take me to the graveyard/and lay me to rest/where my soul’s going is anybody’s guess/come holy spirit take me home” is one of the best opening lines of an album in years. And it’s the casualness of his delivery that sells that song and the rest on this album.

Justice’s vocals are as unrushed as his playing, which adds to the agreeably laid back, country meets folk vibe.  Curiously, the title track, despite some solid finger picking, is probably the least accessible and most uninspired song in this collection. It’s not necessarily a bad song, it just suffers by comparison to some really great tracks packed around it, like the strikingly beautiful “Song for Caity (A Daughters Song)” or the anthemic “The Winds of Change.” Elsewhere, Justice flexes some of his best lyrical muscles on the country-tinged “Slipping Away” and the closing track “Calling All Lost Souls.” 

A great way to spend the next 40 minutes-or-so of your life.  

John B. Moore has been covering the seemingly disparate, but surprisingly complementary genres of Americana and punk rock for the past 20 years.

Blurt/New Noise Magazine/InSite Atlanta/NeuFutur Magazine

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