Derek Thomas & Skyline Drive – Beyond the Trestles

Wait. What? Seems like just yesterday I tried to listen to a Derek Thomas & Skyline Drive album and couldn’t. Well, I could listen to it but when it came to writing about it, the words wouldn’t come. One time through the new album, Beyond the Trestles, and I’m all asshole and elbows digging through the mountain of CDs I have received over the years looking for it. I must have made a mistake. No way it is the same Derek Thomas I heard a couple of years ago. I mean, the voice is probably the same, but… But the songs are better, maybe, or maybe I am just living in an alternative world. Front to back, this is one damn impressive piece of work.

Now don’t get me wrong here. I did not hate Topanga Ranch Motel, the band’s earlier album. I just didn’t get it. Or more probably, I didn’t hear it. At the time, the world was awash in enough Americana to raise the sea level another twenty feet, it seemed like, and maybe I was tiring of the overwhelming mass of it. But I didn’t get it.

I get this one, though. Either I am playing catchup or Thomas has refined his songwriting and raised the bar. This is not what I would call Americana but singer/songwriter fare or, more aptly, soft rock. That’s right. Thomas has somehow reached back to the seventies and plucked the best of what artists like J.D. Souther and Andrew Gold were doing— writing songs with smooth edges and lyrics to make the listener pause if not outright ache. He semi-rocks on songs like “Postcards,” but it is not outright rock at all, rather a pop-ish rendering of it. Mostly, though, the album is midtempo tunes of the anthem variety— looks at life and love not unlike the songs of the Long John Baldry It Ain’t Easy period or Rod Stewart at the time of Every Picture Tells a Story. Maybe not as adventurous but definitely in the same ball park.

Judging by the quality of the music, I would guess that these sessions were something else. Not only are the songs beautifully pieced together, the musicians obviously invested in the moment, but the arrangement are first class. I mean, an album with piano and organ piques my interest, but adding Wurlitzer and Fender Rhodes into the mix and it makes me giddy (I’m kidding, but I do love a good Rhodes or Wurlitzer segment when it is done right (hint here— it was done right). Organ and keyboards too.  

Favorite tracks? “Ring Them Bells” strikes an emotional note, the slow and smooth meeting the lonesome and loss. It easily sits right alongside “He Was a Friend of Mine” in my mind. And there is the very anthemic and soulful “Rubber Bullets” (and, no, it is not the 10CC classic). And “Broken Angel,” slow and sweet and heart-gripping. I am sure they will all become favorites over time. They are all good and even better than good. I give Thomas credit. He has written (and recorded) some real beauties here.

So here I am, hurrying to finish this review so I can dig through that mountain to see if maybe I had made the mistake I hope I didn’t. I hate getting things wrong and I do it more than I like.