ALBUM REVIEW: A Reconvened Uncle Lucius Makes It Count on ‘Like It’s the Last One Left’
Grant Britt
Posted On December 7, 2023
Uncle Lucius ain’t some avuncular relative who sits in the corner rocking and puffing on his pipe while he bounces the grandkids on his knee. This bunch of Austin thumpers and twangers had the scene tore up in those parts since their inception in 2002. A slew of twangy roots/rocky releases, including 2006’s Something They Ain’t, 2009’s Pick Your Head Up, 2012’s And You Are Me, and 2015’s The Light, made them local, regional, and national roadhouse stalwarts.
The band broke up in 2018, with lead singer Kevin Galloway pursuing a solo career. But when “Keep the Wolves Away,” an Uncle Lucius song that Galloway wrote about his father’s injuries from a chemical accident aboard a tanker in Galveston Bay and the ensuing hardships on the family, was included in a 2020 episode of the TV series Yellowstone, it revitalized the band’s career and led to the members coming together in 2023 to release Like It’s the Last One Left.
The band lives up to the title’s premise, belting out these tunes like it was their last go round. “Keep Singing Along” sounds like Waylon Jennings staggering into a church looking for redemption or just a place to rest where the acoustics are better than the roadhouses he usually haunts.
“Civilized Anxiety” has echoes of Dave Alvin’s 1982 hit “Border Radio,” shimmery sonic waves bouncing off the arid landscape in a jangly badlands boogie and Galloway sounding like a severely over-amped tent revival preacher excoriating his flock.
Uncle Lucius (photo by Mark Abernathy)
Galloway hits his manic shaman pinnacle on “Holy Roller,” getting down in the aisles and rollin’ around in the spirit of funk and twang worship.
“Trace My Soul” invents a new category — country-western gospel soul — as guitarist Mike Carpenter co-opts the sacred steel principle, bending rocky chords heavenward with extreme vigor.
It’s difficult to put a finger on the pulse of this stuff. It throbs so hard that the probing digits keep getting bounced off. Maybe the best thing to do is just sit down and worship with it till you can’t sit still, then let the spirit move you.
Uncle Lucius’ Like It’s the Last One Left is out Dec. 8 on Boo Clap Records/Thirty Tigers.
