Album Review – Nathan Evans Fox’s “Heirloom”

Indie Rock-Inspired Americana (#570.5) on the Country DDS.

There’s a strong reason to consider North Carolina as the true crossroads of America. Geographically, it’s where the North and the South intersect, rub up against each other, at a times, clash and conflict. Musically, it’s where you might hear some of the most pure forms of roots music like Piedmont bluegrass, while it’s also a proving ground for some of the most important indie rock bands to ever ply the trade. The Tar Heel State has also put forward some of the best bands that mix these two disciplines, from American Aquarium, to the Avett Brothers, to Wednesday.

Nathan Evans Fox is originally from rural Glen Alpine, North Carolina and a 4th generation farm. His new album Heirloom very much embraces and symbolizes the confluence of contradictions in many progressive enclaves in the American South. Fox says himself that he’s “too hillbilly to play cowboy cosplay and too hillbilly to be standard-issue indie.” That’s very much what you hear on Heirloom. At times the listening experience is sequenced in pleasing indie rock sensibility. At other times, the moments are stripped down and stark in their adherence to old music traditions such as folk, Gospel, and early country. Though the stories and assertions are sometimes progressive in nature, they can’t help but be robed in rural vernacular.

Beyond the sounds and song-specific themes, there is a thru line to this record, commenced with the opening song “Lots of Beginnings” where Fox is singing to his new first child, brought into sharper focus with the title track delivered in the middle of the album, and concluding with the final song “I Know the End.” Along with the quilt that comprises the backdrop to the cover art, it all conspires to give this album a depth through the dimension of time spread across familial generations, as well as a cohesive theme and message.

In between, Nathan Evans Fox addresses life’s many challenges and frustrations, especially as someone from humble means who through serving as a Chaplain and in another capacities has picked up on the very legitimate concerns of class inequality and the widening gulf between America’s haves and have nots. Yet despite the heavy nature of some of the material, at times Nathan handles it in very enjoyable ways, including the escapism of “Racecar” that still deserves credit for its symbolism, and the quite satisfying versus of the attitudinal “Landlords, Bill Lee, etc.” about hard-hearted people.

Despite the anxiety behind the inspiration, “Little Bit of Shine” is a great listening song, helped along by harmony vocals by Emily Hines, and a little bit of steel guitar played by Nathan Evans himself. Ditto for the more quiet and composed “Sevindust,” where Fox’s steel guitar is even more attention. Though Fox is primarily lauded as a songwriter, he’s a skilled multi-instrumentalist, also proficient on the fiddle, mandolin, and banjo, which he profiles on this record.

You do worry a little bit with an album like this that since it sits between two genres like couch cushions, it might get lost in between like a money clip. The rednecks might appreciate a song like Gospel-tinged and hopeful “Hillbilly Hymn,” but might get lost on the more obtuse and involved tracks like “Meanness,” and vice versa for the indie rock audience.

But despite all the major plaudits this album is receiving from the press for its political expressiveness and progressive stances (something they always love to tout and overhype), this album feels much more personal than political, much more measured than partisan. If anything, Heirloom helps expose how iniversal the plight of the poorer and disenfranchised is, and even how the devout and the non-believer can recognize the hypocrisy in co-opting of religious characters for ulterior purposes like in the song “Jesus and the Buck.” At least for this album, Fox keeps most of his direct political activism relegated to social media, even if some use it to color and characterize his music.

Music has that ability to soften the kind of hardened hearts than Nathan Evans Fox sings about on this album by sharing distinctly human stories that allow the listener to walk in someone else’s shoes for three-something minutes in a way that sloganeering online rarely seems to accomplish. These are the possibilities that Nathan Evan Fox unlocks via Heirloom, while bridging natural divides of the geographic, sonic, and ideological perspective.

8.1/10

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Stream/Purchase Heirloom