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James Hyland has been bouncing around country music’s lesser-known echelon for over a decade, most notably with the South Austin Jug Band, writing modestly good tunes that fall pleasantly somewhere between alt-country and folk rock. On his debut solo effort with his band the Joint Chiefs, Hyland’s uncanny ability to produce soft-spoken, well-rounded songs is ever apparent. Celestial Navigation is a glimpse at the modern day troubadour, road-weary and broken-hearted, making his way across America with a cache of delicate and delightful country rock.
James Hyland and the Joint Chiefs are peculiar in that they never disappoint, yet seem to operate with endless restraint. Even Hyland’s chaotic portrayal of New York in “Radio City” plays with the ease of a song about good times in a small town though the lyrics call for a more dynamic arrangement: “paid eleven dollar toll plus a cab ride/ the tunnels even kinda got a name like mine/ and everything around here seems so alive”. Hyland and the Joint Chiefs are perfectly content laying back in a steel pedal wash and even though they’re strangers to the big city, they find a home.
“Snowy River”, “Girls from Lake Pontchartrain”, “21 Days, 21 Towns”, and “Low Country Sound” all fall into Navigation’s “road songs” category. All portraits of rural regional America that one comes across during aimless travel, and places one only has time to reflect upon in the slow pursuit of a destination via the road. “Lake Pontchartrain”—despite its Louisiana reference—only imparts a bit of Cajun flavoring, with an upbeat rhythm section and gospel organ as Hyland relays his scene-for-scene impressions about New Orleans. It marks the most energetic moment on the album aside from the mellow rock-out at the end of album closer “American Son”. Likewise, “Snowy River” is Hyland’s pleasant, high-country ballad. Neither songs offend or elevate too much, they just coast along much like Hyland’s observant mind as he goes.
Meanwhile, between towns, Hyland manages to find time to muse about his personal misfortunes ever saddened by a broken heart in the solid “More Than I Let On”, jaded in the bittersweet refrains of “Paint a Girl” and damn-near-tearful in the folk ballad “Come to Me”. Given that he doesn’t spend his time name-dropping locations and scenes from his travels, these songs play organically and find their strength in their unabashed honesty and vulnerability.
“21 Days, 21 Towns” is a country song about being a country musician that provides proper prelude to album closer “American Son”, Hyland’s “war tune” that nicely ties together the ideas and belonging and alienation enumerated in earlier tracks. For this reviewer, it’s all a little too neat, though. As much as I enjoyed the album up to this point, and as much as I respect the sacrifice made on behalf of soldiers, there’s something about country songs about soldiers that smacks as a bit too contrived. Take, for instance, another country record reviewed last year, Leo Rondeau’s Down at the End of the Bar, which features the shoot-out ballad “Had I Known” as second to last track. The two tracks work in very much the same way as pseudo-personal tales of failure and redemption in drastic life and death circumstances. Hyland, however, veers off the track by trying to tell the tale of an ambiguous “American Son” (in this case, a veteran wounded in battle) as opposed to using himself as the subject. Rondeau — although “Had I Known” is about a 19th century train robbery gone wrong — still instills in the listener that this song is really about him or at least something inside of him, instead of attempting to tell the tale of someone else.
The only thing holding Celestial Navigation back from being a truly memorable release is the fact that Hyland and the Joint Chiefs find such a homogeneous, country middle ground, the tracks seem like different versions of themselves — all arranged by steady acoustic picking, a reserved rhythm section, and the pedal steel. But thanks to Hyland’s writing, we’re able to slip away from the music for a while and revel in what he has to say.
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