#34 Night Life by Ray Price

For the purposes of conducting this review I first had to acquaint myself with some of the terminology used in this album. While this may sound a bit over-dramatic I actually had no idea what a honky-tonk was before, and now I know this album makes a greater degree of sense. For those who, like me, don’t really know what a honky-tonk is I have ascertained that it’s a type of bar who’s name is derived from the sound of geese.

Ok that definition didn’t really help, although the derivation information is serious. The music of the honky-tonk is one you would expect to find in these bars in the Southern USA in the middle of the twentieth century. It is a type of country music, one of the main constituent parts of what we would now consider county, and has such all but disappeared having been enveloped into the genre as a whole. As such the ghostly echoes of guitars that reverberate through out these tracks are those that can be heard on many modern songs that take inspiration from the genre, the first coming to mind being Change Is Hard by the M.Ward/Zooey Deschanel project She & Him.

After two listens of this album I was really unsure what I thought of it. The only conclusion that I had definitively reached was that Ray Price’s voice, especially in The Twenty-Fourth Hour reminded me of Morrissey singing country. On the third listen though it occurred to me that upon each exposure of this album I grew to like it even more. Suddenly the subtle nuances of each track began to be uncovered with the subjects of love, loneliness and loss becoming rendered apparent.

One such track, and the first to truly emerge emotionally to me, was A Girl In The Night. As songs go it is a fairly simple portrait of a girl sitting alone in the bar with the singer trying to guess facts about her life and her past. However, it is with Ray Price’s delivery of the spoken passage towards the end of the song that actually moved me to tears. There was a sense of empathy and compassion that came across which to me signifies a great artist.

No, this is not the most exciting or innovative album on the list. I will hold my hands up and admit that. What this album does have though is an amazing capacity for empathic delivery. If someone were just to have this album on in the background as they are going about other business they are excused to thinking that this is just another country album with violins and a rhythm section. It is however when you begin to focus on Ray Price himself that more is revealed. His voice, his ability to convey emotion and the unusual reverberating quality of his vibrato all serve to emphasise the lyrics with such a great subtlety that after a while you are sitting down with tears in your eyes (which happened on my first listen and I had no clue as to why).

This is not just an album for those that can appreciate country music though. In my opinion it is for anyone who can appreciate loneliness, heartache and the need for a good shot of whiskey as you go through it. Also violins.

7.5/10

Top Tracks:
Night Life
The Twenty-Fourth Hour
A Girl In The Night
Pride