DL Rossi - Lonesome Kind (2021)

Underneath the surface of the ten songs on singer-songwriter DL Rossi’s new album Lonesome Kind is a simmering and slow-burning intensity that takes the listener on a fascinating, mesmerizing, and ultimately emotional musical journey.

In a superlative songwriting fashion, Rossi displays a tough-minded optimism on his creations on this record that is simultaneously rooted in recognizing the difficulties of human existence and in the desire to transcend the limitations placed upon all of us by this life. It is in the end a thoroughly honest musical document by a superior songwriter that is destined to stand as one of 2021’s signature musical statements.

Drawing upon the multiple musical influences of folk, country, and soulful alt-pop, and upon his own harrowing tribulations which include battling testicular cancer, surviving a devastating divorce, and a nervous breakdown which had him briefly turn away from music, Rossi as a bard extraordinaire on this album provides multiple opportunities in these quietly powerful songs for everyone to find something to relate to both emotionally and intellectually.

While highlights for me on the record include the stirring “Don’t Wait Up,” the poignant “Tubling,” the truth soaked “Hangs,” the celestial “Gold,” and the inspirational “Oak Tree”; truth is, all ten of these songs display Rossi’s prodigious songwriting prowess.

On this, his third album, Rossi elevates himself to the top tier of songwriters operating in American music today. He is the rarest of songwriters in the sense that you feel his battles and struggles as if they were your own or something similar to your own. I can think of no higher praise for a singer-songwriter and I heap copious amounts of this upon Mr. Rossi for this luminous jewel of an album. Long may he tell his stories and in the process tell ours.