ZACHARY LUCKY plays the Cameron House tonight (Thursday, October 17). See listing. Rating: NNN
The third album from Saskatoon folkie Zachary Lucky plays like a sustained road-weary lament as much an album about longing for home as it is about losing someone.
Sparsely backed by fingerpicked guitar, banjo, fiddle and a generous amount of pedal steel (care of Aaron Goldstein), Lucky’s gentle baritone relates intimate stories. On Woke Up, he imagines listening to Townes Van Zandt on the car radio with his love, or singing Bob Dylan’s Song To Woody together (he covers Van Zandt’s Waitin’ For The Day later in the album).
The record is straightforward and confessional, yet its most surprising moment happens at the end: on Sun’s Coming Up, Lucky takes an imaginative leap and dreams about what it would be like to be sent away to war.
Top track: Sun’s Coming Up