CD of the Day, 12/3/09: Ike Reilly-Hard Luck Stories

Ike Reilly is back. The Illinois singer/songwriter/rocker is a personal favorite, ever since his 2004 masterpiece Sparkle in the Finish made its way to the top of my list that year. Reilly is one of our best poets, coming at things from his hard-drinking, hard-living, Irish-American perspective; he's the musical equivalent of Tommy Gavin.

Reilly isn't a power popper per se, but power pop is part of his palette, along with Americana and classic rock. And Hard Luck Stories is his catchiest disc since Sparkle in the Finish. After the bluesy, funky "Morning Glory", "7 Come 11" finds Reilly in his rocking and storytelling element, and "Girls in the Backroom" tells the story of an Iraq War vet in a Willie Nile-styled rocker.

Elsewhere, "Good Work (If You Can Get It)" is a mesmerizing half-rapped, half-sung number with a singalong chorus; "The Reformed Church of the Assault Rifle Band" is a good-timey Exile-era Stones-type number; and "Sheet Metal Moon" splits the difference between power pop and Springsteen. Reilly also employs a couple of name artists: Shooter Jennings joins him on "The War on the Terror and the Drugs", which sounds like it would be political but is more a drunken singalong about women, and Cracker/Camper van Beethoven's David Lowery duets on "The Ballad of Jack and Haley", a track that does sound like Reilly fronting Cracker. The disc closes with "The Golden Corner", which is kind of like "Jungleland" without the bombast. The Springsteen references are appropriate here, as this disc may be to today's bleak economic times what The River was to the Rust Belt/Sun Belt upheaval of the late 70s/early 80s.

Right now it's only available digitally, with a CD release planned in February.

MySpace | iTunes | eMusic

My #1 Album of 2004: The Ike Reilly Assassination-Sparkle In The Finish

Now that I've dispensed with the top 20 of 2005, it's time for a new recurring feature: My favorite albums of recent years. Off the top of my head, I can go back to 1997, so I'll go at least that far back. Without further ado, here's the 2004 installment.


Wayne Bledsoe of the Knoxville (TN) News wrote this about the Ike Reilly Assassination's Sparkle In The Finish, and I'd swear he was channeling my thoughts:

"Every once in a while, an album comes out of nowhere from someone you've never heard of and becomes your favorite album of the year. "Sparkle in the Finish," the second disc by Libertyville, Ill., native Ike Reilly is exactly that kind of record. Reilly's combination of power pop, Americana and even white-boy hipster rap is irresistible."

Sparkle In The Finish indeed became my favorite album of 2004, and it's a real tour de force. Reilly is an incredibly inventive lyricist, and if he were 20 years younger and black (or even remained white, I suppose), he'd likely be one of the biggest rap stars today. Instead, his gift of verbal facility is used in service of some great power pop and rock songs, with one exception: the rapping "I Don't Want What You Got (Goin' On)", in which Reilly namedrops Chuck Berry, Ludacris and Jerry Lee Lewis over a Beck-like beat and it somehow works. While its verses are rapped, the chorus is killer guitar rock.

And then the power pop kicks in. "Holiday in NY" finds Reilly unable to please his woman and lamenting his buddy's drug addiction (a theme that found its way to his also lyrically clever, but less musically enjoyable, 2005 followup Junkie Faithful) and "Whatever Happened To Girl In Me?" rocks with abandon.

But the real highlights of the album come about midway back-to-back: "The Boat Song (We're Getting Loaded)" is Reilly's kiss-off to all of those who he's found annoying, including himself ("The Willy Lomans of rock'n'roll") atop a great melody. The lyrics can be found here. And then there's the excellent "Garbage Day", in which Reilly meets a girl at a protest outside of an execution and ends up dumping her at "a strip joint in the basement of a transient hotel", set to a sing-along chorus.

Things do trail off a bit after that, with some good but not great tracks thereafter, but the highs on this one are so high that they blew away any shortcomings the rest may have had. Reilly is a true talent, even if he's past the prime age for music stardom.

With this album not being Reilly's latest release, it's not easy finding promotional streams and mp3s. You can stream "I Don't Want What You Got (Goin' On)" from his site, but unfortunately the stream for "Garbage Day", while listed, appears to be disabled. The only myspace page for him is a fan-created one that doesn't stream any tracks. 30-second samples of all the tracks can be found at CD Universe. You can pick it up for as little as $4.79 at the Amazon marketplace, and it is available via iTunes.

In closing I have to quote this reviewer from Pop Matters (who wrote a much better and more in-depth review): "this record kicks my ass like it's Ron Artest and I just threw a beer at it."