Review: Hayes Carll Uses Isolation to Rework His Hits on 'Alone Together Sessions'

2020 wasn't supposed to be an “album year” in Hayes Carll's cycle. Having released the well-received What It Is in 2019, this year was supposed to be mostly about touring in support of it. But, well, you know how that went. Carll found himself with 5 months off the road unexpectedly due to COVID-19 (he played his first live show just last week in Nashville and I was lucky enough to be in attendance). While doing some streaming shows kept him going for a while, he eventually started switching things up with his catalog of songs; changing tuning, shifting perspective of a lyric, or putting an acoustic spin on his more electric songs. The result is Alone Together Sessions, which releases Sept. 4.

Without access to a studio, Carll had to rely on home recording technology. It's a barrier that turned into a plus for the album, which has a DIY “back porch guitar pull” feel without the polish of a standard studio recording. Joining Carll via remote recording were producer and virtual one-man band Darrell Scott, who can play anything with strings and contributes all of the instrumentals on the album except Carll's acoustic guitar and harmonica and Luke Moeller's violin, as well as backing vocals.

Another guest is Texas legend Ray Wylie Hubbard, who “joined” Carll via his own studio to duet the song they co-wrote which served as Carll's breakthrough hit, “Drunken Poet's Dream.” If any artist was perfect for the loose and rough-hewn feel of Alone Together Sessions, it's Hubbard, who has never been “put together” in his life and has, in fact, made a career of playing the part of the “drunken poet” of their song. The pair's banter to end the song, trading gentle insults with each other, might have been separated by thousands of miles, but gave the song an intimate in-house feel.

Carll's one live recording partner on the project is the one who happens to already live in his home, which is certainly not a bad thing when that person happens to be an Americana artist as, if not more, known than Carll himself, his wife Allison Moorer. Moorer's vocals can be heard throughout the album, but is out front in the one song from the album that isn't a Hayes Carll original. Moorer and Carll duet on the Lefty Frizzell classic made most famous by Merle Haggard (and again a decade later as a duet his between Haggard and Jewel), “That's the Way Love Goes.” It's the undeniable highlight of the album, a touching counterpoint to Carll's usual stable of wry, sometimes funny, and typically cynical songs.

Of Carll's originals, the song that is most transformed by the acoustic shift is the title track from his 2011 album KMAG YOYO. One of Carll's hardest rocking songs in its original form, I had some serious doubts about how well it would work as an acoustic song considering how well the electric guitar slid under his rapid-fire lyrics. But, with a slowed down lyric and some twists in the delivery, the acoustic version (with an understated electric strum courtesy of Scott) lets the listener spend more time with the often absurdist lyrics, shifting the song away from the brain blast acid trip of the original to a more disbelieving confusion as the narrator finds himself moving from a war zone in Afghanistan to a rocket ship headed for some unknown destination.

There's not a lot that can be said positively about 2020 and, having seen his almost overwhelmed reaction to the applause after that first song back on stage, I feel comfortable saying he'd rather be on the road. But as he points out in the album's bio “When you make your living playing out there for people, you’re constantly in motion. That momentum doesn’t leave much time for thinking about what happened, let alone what it all means.” With Alone Together Sessions, Carll has made the most of that time to think about his songs and his fans are the beneficiaries. It's an album that exists somewhere in the middle ground between studio and live album, between hits collection and new compositions. Like 2020, it's uncharted territory and, unlike 2020, it's really damned good.