Working with the talented Chicago, IL-based producer Brian Deck (Modest Mouse, Iron & Wine), Nevada singer/songwriter Liam Kyle Cahill is on just the right track to become a force to be reckoned with. Dirt on a Diamond is his second studio album, containing ten original songs (eleven overall if you count the acoustic rendition of “Love You to Life”). Cahill’s discography overall is summed up best by his Bandcamp statement, which reads, “Imagine Mumford & Sons in a bar room brawl with Bob Dylan at a punk rock concert-- that’s my sound.” However, this sophomore release goes in a slightly different direction.
Fusing country and bluegrass with Americana, folk, and traces of alternative rock, Dirt on a Diamond “serves as a tribute to the many faces and stories Cahill has encountered on his travels throughout the U.S.” Deck engineered and produced the album at SHIRK Studios and mixed it at Studio Maximus, both of which are of course located in Chicago. Lyrically, it paints a vivid picture of life, love and loss, and it serves as a heartfelt tribute to all the faces and stories that Cahill has encountered while traveling across the U.S. Cahill starts off his new LP with what’s perhaps the most sonically shocking cut, “That Grave.” This sounds much darker than anything that comes after it, which isn’t to say that it’s the best, but its foreboding atmosphere will suck you in. For some reason, I can hear a band such as R.E.M. cover this. With plenty of raw charisma and amplifiers, “Come Hell or Heartbreak” comes storming in. “Everyone’s so scared to change / I’m scared not to,” Cahill sings in his higher register. This is where Deck’s production and mixing chops are showcased best, and I must say, I really enjoyed this one! “Follow the Stars” and “Love You to Life,” the only two explicit songs on here, come next. The former is yearning in its lyrical messages whereas the latter lies more on the light-hearted side. With “Love You to Life” of course being a play off of “Love you to death,” I was expecting it to sound corny, but not so much in an annoying way as in an amusing way. Those expectations were lived up to. Both this and its acoustic version prominently feature banjo playing and strings to spice up its arrangement of guitars, bass and drums. In other words, it’s a terrific fusion of bluegrass and folk rock. “Your Curable Sadness” follows. This one reminds me very much of Matchbox Twenty, in part because of its build from a slow-dance verse to a livelier chorus. Again, it’s evidence of Cahill’s burgeoning talent. We dip back into the bluegrass side of this project with “On the Road,” where the rapid strumming of a banjo conjures up vivid memories of long road trips. While I’m not exactly a country fan, I can clearly tell that a song like “Music Money & Love” is meant to be played on country radio (“Music, money and love / On my best nights I make all three”). Change up the instrumentation here and there, give it some more polish, and it very well could be. However, it’s still missing a credit for the woman singing backing vocals on the chorus. “Nothing at All” again sounds like a recently unearthed Matchbox Twenty cut (the similarities between Cahill and Rob Thomas as vocalists are uncanny), and is all the better for it. Lastly, Cahill treats us to the last two original songs before ending with the de facto closer. “Reno,” a Wild West-tinged tribute to the titular city, is a decent slow burn of a song, but I see why he felt like he had to put one last song (an acoustic version of “Love You to Life”) on the record after “Sink or Swim” because unfortunately, “Sink or Swim” chooses to sink. I was hoping for more with a title like that, but it feels limp and underwritten. A more recognizable melody would have helped this a fair bit. Still, though, nine out of eleven ain’t all that bad, and the album itself has very high production values! Listen to Dirt on a Diamond if you need to scratch your Americana-rooted singer/songwriter itch because I highly recommend this.
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