Jesse malin

Sunset Kids

wiCked Cool Singer-songwriter on thrilling and reflective form.

Like thumbing through the pages of a Raymond Carver collection, this latest album from Jesse Malin plays out like a meditation on lives lived in the margins; motel rooms, hospital wards, ambitions blighted, expectations lowered. By Malin’s own admission, his latest record is “about owning it: the failures, the victories: the moments”.

Produced by Lucinda Williams, who cameos on the sad-beautiful Room 13, this is Malin at his most personal, written against the backdrop of his father fading away as his son metered out his time between a Florida hotel and beside the old man’s bed. Which gives the album a lustrous melancholy even in the bright flashes of songs like the chiming Chemical Heart or the lovely jangle of Shining Down. And a song like Friends In Florida sounds like the downbeat soundtrack to a drive through the undulating panoramic south, the sun always descending. In among all that, this is his best record yet. ■■■■■■■■■■