Johnny Irion | Sleeping Soldiers of Love
(Blackwing Music)
Honey-voiced western Massachusetts folk rocker Johnny Irion furthers his Cosmic American Music cred with his latest long player, Sleeping Soldiers of Love. Like past releases, the self-produced Soldiers, mixed by Wilco’s Pat Sansone, is an endlessly pleasant affair, an album that wafts by with perhaps more charm than ambition, without feeling any slighter for that. Obvious touchstones—for Irion and cowriter and Jeff Bridges collaborator John Goodwin—are Gram Parsons and Neil Young’s mystically ecological efforts. Less obvious, but no less potent, are echoes of Appaloosa’s baroque freak folk. Guests include Bridges, Sansone, R.E.M.’s Mike Mills, the Mother Hips, and Chatham Rabbits. At its heaviest, on “Back Hoe Daddy,” Soldiers—with a title track coauthored by Irion’s former father-in-law Arlo Guthrie—recalls side two of Young’s proto-grunge masterpiece Rust Never Sleeps. “Nice” rarely works in rock ‘n’ roll, but it does here, and the concept serves as Irion’s calling card.
This article appears in October 2024.
