Precocious 20-year-old alt-country newcomer Dylan LeBlanc certainly ticks all the boxes for being the latest flavour of the month. Just look at that name for starters — it sounds like folk’s finest exponent smuggling molasses for some Caribbean pirate. Add to that a great musical pedigree (his father was a Muscle Shoals session man), a record label used to breaking talented indie artists, and the sort of country-rock voice that Neil Young made famous and it’s all enough to get Americana lovers hotter than an August night in the bayou. But can the young man deliver at the first attempt?
While much has already been said about LeBlanc’s Neil Young-esque voice, the artist who springs to mind most on “Pauper’s Field” is actually Ryan Adams. Musically too, the style of this debut is similar to Adams’ more mournful, less rocky works, recalling the underrated “Easy Tiger” in particular. Unlike Adams however, LeBlanc rarely sorties out of his melancholic comfort zone into bracing rock ‘n’ roll territory. There is no question that LeBlanc has the voice of an angel, albeit a fallen one with a fondness for Gauloises and bourbon, and he variously sounds like Adams, Young and Fleet Foxes’ main man Robin Pecknold across these dozen songs of (you guessed it) sadness and loss.
With unquestionable gifts in his armoury, at his best LeBlanc manages to pull off the pining country-folk very pleasantly indeed, particularly the skiffling lead single “If Time Was For Wasting” and the genuinely affecting “If the Creek Don’t Rise” (which features a typically well-judged cameo from Emmylou Harris). The whole album is infused, if not drenched, with the sound of the pedal steel, gently picked guitar and shuffling rhythms. “Low” blends the three so effortlessly that it makes you mournful that you’re not ambling through Virginia with a southern belle on your arm.
Good as it is “Pauper’s Field” doesn’t quite deliver the fully-fledged impact that LeBlanc’s talents promise. Perhaps, barely out of his teenage years, the singer’s songwriting craft hasn’t quite developed to the point where it can carry the weight of early expectation, and the album certainly meanders like a Mississippi steamboat with a Jack Daniels’ guzzling pilot at times. It may be that “Pauper’s Field” proves to be the moment that a great talent announces himself to the world — but on this evidence it will take a little more time for that talent to reach its full maturity. That he will get there is barely in doubt.
7.5/10
