ALBUM REVIEW: Angel White’s ‘GHOSTS OF THE WEST: THE ALBUM’ is a Luxurious, Clever Debut
Meredith Lawrence
Posted On March 7, 2025
The streets of Dallas’s Deep Ellum entertainment district hold a deep history of legendary buskers whose influence echoes through music’s greats. During the city’s blues heyday, Blind Lemon Jefferson and Lead Belly sang there; more recently, Charley Crockett made a name for himself first playing for change on the street then in Deep Ellum’s clubs; and now, singer/songwriter Angel White who in his own turn has become a fixture of Dallas/Fort Worth’s bustling Americana scene.
With his debut full-length studio album, GHOSTS OF THE WEST: THE ALBUM, White plants his feet firmly in both his musical and personal lineage. A fifth generation cowboy and beekeeper, White grew up in a small town south of Fort Worth, and was inspired by both the wide open spaces and dramatic landscapes of the west and often-overlooked stories of the Black, Mexican, and Indigenous cowboys and musicians.
On GHOSTS, White pays homage to country music’s rich canon of heartbreak songs (“HOUSE OF CARDS,” “IF YOU’RE GONNA LEAVE,” “CIGS AND ALCOHOL”) and freedom anthems (“VILLAIN,” “DOWN BY THE RIVER,” “LONG WAY UP”). But he’s also adept at tilting common tropes to fit his own perspective. On “OUTLAW,” White escapes a doomed relationship finding bravado in standing up for himself rather than a blaze of gunfire. On “SOMEDAY,” a comforting track about finding your way, even when you feel lost, he sings, “You keep forgetting what your perfect heart is for / the trees start to look a little greener / time don’t wait for no one / you ain’t ever seen a life like this one.” White also devotes an entire track to his grandma with “CALL YOUR GRANDMA,” consisting solely of a recorded voicemail message.
At times, White verges into pop-country territory, but minus the contrived beats and bro-country vibes so often associated with the genre — think Taylor Swift, not Luke Bryan — and routinely anchored in steel guitar. Instead, he appears unconcerned with the trappings of any one genre, enjoying influence from country, soul, rock, folk, and bluegrass music, and grounded in a rich storytelling tradition.
Varied and thoroughly enjoyable though the album is, White is perhaps at this best when he slows down. Two tracks beyond the album’s previously-released material (the first third of GHOSTS was released as the 2024 EP GHOSTS OF THE WEST: VOLUME 1) White gets serious with “RUNNING IN PLACE,” a slow, reverb-heavy, riveting meditation on identity. And whereas White rides into the album in a cloud of dust with album opener “OUTLAW,” he ends the album with a heartfelt, delicate lullaby to the beauty of ephemeral moments, “WILD PAINTED HORSES.”
Clocking in at 15 tracks, GHOSTS is ambitious for a debut album, but White keeps the thread throughout, earning listeners’ attention until the very end.
Angel White’s GHOSTS OF THE WEST: THE ALBUM is out March 7 via Wyatt Road Records.
