Graham Lindsey

Let's dispense with the obvious: Graham Lindsey sounds a hell of a lot like a certain major dude from Minnesota. Now let's get specific: "To Ramona" may or may not be Lindsey's favorite Dylan song, but in it he found a template for an entire album of feverish, cascading, smacked-by-love-and-life-and-smacking-right-back lyrics that could be mistaken for association jive if this Wisconsin kid didn't have what that major dude also had: blinding intelligence, mordant wit, a heart as big as the Midwest. Romanticism: "You and I are a stupid symphony/Reborn and dying constantly." Politics: "I heard that somewhere something happened once but never quite occurred." Honesty: "I can't remember waking up or what my dreams were for/I am useless to the wild earth." Had someone told you Famous Anonymous Wilderness (Lindsey's 2003 debut on the Nashville indie label Catamount) was a collection of outtakes from Another Side of Bob Dylan, you'd be pissed. You'd want to know why songs this good didn't make the final cut.

Related Content

• Bob Dylan and Dawes at the Peabody Opera House, 04/23/13: Review and Setlist
  April 24, 2013
• Out Every Night: The Best Shows in St. Louis from April 22 to 28
  April 22, 2013
• The Six Best Phil Ramone Productions
  April 2, 2013
• The Top Ten Douchiest Guitar Players of All Time
  March 27, 2013
• The Six Best Shitty-Sounding Records
  March 19, 2013

More About

• Graham Lindsey
• Bob Dylan
• Ramona
• John Mayer
• Ani DiFranco

Still, do we need another new Dylan, especially given that the old one isn't about to give quarter? We do, if only to remind ourselves that bland-outs like John Mayer or diarist divas like Ani DiFranco aren't all singer/songwriters are good for these days. Listening to Lindsey's hieratic whirlwind of images and rhymes, you remember that just a voice, a guitar and some harmonica can reveal, stun and rivet you to a musical vision. With an anger and urgency transposed, perhaps, from an earlier life as a punk rocker, Lindsey isn't a traditionalist. His best songs have a dire energy, an emotional and verbal volatility that feels more than a little dangerous -- delivered in his spindly, Midwestern drawl, they'll tear holes in the air around you.