Out of the blue
Texas-based songwriter and seer detours off the Southern highway.
Israel Nash ★★★★ Topaz LOOSE. CD/DL/LP
ALMOST A decade ago, in the 100-capacity back room of Cleeres pub in Kilkenny, Israel Nash made his live European debut with a hurricane blast of country rock so intensely loud that the nails in the corrugated metal roof are still rattling.
Nash is one of those musicians for whom music is a spiritual quest. The son of a Missouri minister, he grew up in the church without entirely embracing his father’s faith and replaced religion’s sense of community with the camaraderie of musicians. As he sings on one of Topaz’s central tracks, the joyous Closer, “Strumming chords and making friends and rolling Js and losing money/Running in and out of luck” is very much his wheelhouse, one he’s well able to indulge on his Texan hill ranch outside Austin.
In the splendid isolation of his Quonset hut studio next to the ranch house, Nash slowly put together Topaz on his own over the past 18 months, rather than his usual method of inviting friends over to smoke, drink and rip through an album in a couple of weeks. Taking time to think deeply about what was most important to him, all that reflection didn’t exactly change him or his path so much as open up different avenues. In the past, Nash’s reedy voice, live-and-letlive politics and peeling guitar have most often been compared to Neil Young, but Topaz brings new dimensions and subtleties to his music.
Opening track Dividing Lines is the most radical departure from Nash’s six previous albums, a slice of country prog that wouldn’t be out of place on Pink Floyd’s Meddle. But it’s slinky, snake-hipped Southern soul that dominates the album, from the chicken grease grooves sliding beneath punching horns on Down In The Country, like a Memphis Baby Huey, or the regretfully tender, blue-eyed Stay, rueing the prospect of leaving home and his wife for his other life on the road. In another decade, Nash could’ve sold Stay to Hall & Oates and trousered the royalties from a worldwide smash.
Nash is also a political science major and, start to finish, Topaz conveys a strong undercurrent of social commentary, from the all-too topical and self-explanatory Dividing Lines to the final track, Pressure, which pops with a growling futility and injustice similar to Young’s Powderfinger, with added Tex-Mex swagger.
As a man on a quest, Nash needs to constantly move forward, re-evaluating and reinventing his limits. He may not be leading his flock to entirely new pastures with Topaz, but he’s showing them a bright and clear map of how he’s getting there.