Dylan Leblanc - Cast The Same Old Shadow (2012)

On 2010's Paupers Field, then 20-year-old Shreveport, Louisiana native Dylan LeBlanc presented a confident, if slightly laconic, new voice that was based in the tradition of maverick singer/songwriters like Townes Van Zandt, Neil Young, and Gram Parsons. Lush, less timid, and even more melancholy than Paupers Field, 2012's appropriately titled Cast the Same Old Shadow feels like a proper second outing, building on the strengths of its predecessor while maintaining its overall gloomy, gothic Americana vibe. LeBlanc's pained, doomed romanticism, best exemplified by weepy cuts like "Part One: The End," "Where Are You Now," and "Lonesome Waltz," may be the "same old shadow" he's referring to in the title, and it casts an awfully wide net over the proceedings, resulting in an ultra-slow-burn listening experience that falls somewhere between the wretched rain-soaked beauty of Mickey Newbury and the hymn-like sonic expansiveness of Richard Hawley. At its best, like on the aforementioned "Where Are You Now" and the sprawling, instantly engaging "Brother," LeBlanc looks to high and lonesome country for inspiration, eking out his own subgenre while respectfully adhering to the original's mournful simplicity, but Cast the Same Old Shadow ultimately crumbles under the weight of its own despondency. LeBlanc's lonely, elastic voice, which can go from a ragged, triumphant croon to a distant warble within a single phrase, feels like it's fighting against not only the weight of the world, but the engineering booth as well, more often than not flailing away beneath the towering waves of admittedly lovely but unyielding atmosphere, and coming up predictably spent.~Cast the Same Old Shadow Review by James Christopher Monger