Singer-songwriter Arlo McKinley has followed up his critically aclaimed 2020 album Die Midwestern with another outstanding outing on This Mess We’re In (2022). While the new album, like the previous one, mines the tragedies of life, McKinley’s warm voice reminds us we are not travelling alone.
Songs on This Mess We’re In reflect McKinley’s attempts to make some sense of everything, or at least to find some hope. As NPR describes, the new album “reflects on loss, addiction, self-forgiveness and navigating this post-pandemic world.” Like for many of us, the last few years have not been easy on McKinley. Having struggled with his own addiction in the past, McKinley faced several losses in the last few years, including the deaths of his mother and several close friends.
“Now I know that nothing is forever;
And no one leaves
As perfect as they came.”
– “Dancing Days”
McKinley writes from his personal experiences but as in all good art, the personal is universal. Many of the songs on This Mess We’re In touch on heartbreak (“I Don’t Mind”), longing and loneliness (“Rushintherug”), addiction and striving to get back home (in a lovely duet with songwriter Logan Halstead on “Back Home”), male friendship (“City Lights”), and loss (“Here’s to the Dying,” a song McKinley wrote about his mother passing away).
The album’s themes are timeless, but they also seem especially right and inspired by modern times. There’s even what appears to be a nod to youthful revolutionary spirits in “To Die For,” a song McKinley wrote about the music industry.
We watched as they chose to ignore,
The changing of the guard and the sound;
We were few but we were ready for war;
A war, to burn this place to the ground.
— “To Die For”
Despite the willingness to confront the darkness, McKinley maintains there may be some light at the end of the tunnel, especially in the touching piano ballad of the title track, “This Mess We’re In.” As in “To Die For,” the singer again references setting the world on fire, but in a different way, with the woman he loves. In the struggle to get through the mess, the singer finds “proof that the bad days do get better” and “proof that love is still alive.”
McKinley has further explained, that despite the tragedies reflected in many of the songs, “I don’t think any of them are without hope. I never write a song where I feel it comes across as being defeated completely. I may feel defeated at this moment, but it can get better – that’s the mindset I’m writing from.”
The overall sound of the album is not a major digression from Die Midwestern, although McKinney has noted that This Mess We’re In features mores strings and organs. The Ohio artist further explained to the Cincinnati Enquirer that during the making of the new album, “I was listening to a lot of Nick Cave and Nick Drake at this time. I think some Nick Drake snuck in there. It was different from anything I’ve done yet. A lot of this record is different than anything I’ve put out.”
And then there is McKinley’s outstanding voice. Arlo McKinley remains one of the outstanding singer-songwriters we are lucky to still have around, producing wonderful albums since signing as a solo artist on John Prine’s Oh Boy Records. Check out the first single from This Mess We’re In, “Stealing Dark From the Night Sky.”
What is your favorite song on The Mess We’re In? Leave your two cents in the comments.
