Album Review: The Outlaw Cherie Lee & Other Western Tales by Shaboozey
Sending Cherie Lee after the men responsible for her father’s death, Shaboozey builds a revenge tale that sings hardest about the bill coming due.
In the concept of The Outlaw Cherie Lee & Other Western Tales, Jamie Foxx narrates the story of revenge and how far a woman would go to get it. Since her father died and she wants revenge on the people responsible, he wonders whether she is willing to go as low as that or will try dying to give them justice. There is always a high price to pay for revenge, he says and disappears. In the next part of the song, Shaboozey sings in first person about a man who has a price on his head, a rifle, a pony, a cigar, and a crying mother who worries about his drinking. Price is what he sings the most.
She is 19 years old, gone from her home, and has only one mission, which is to find all those men who did her wrong, and Shaboozey gives her one. She can make the devil come out of the pastor. She can skin people alive, take them to hell, kill a whole line of bastards and refuse the money because the purpose of the mission was not money. Two guns, a look that kills, and nobody can reach for his gun first. During “Sweet Revenge,” Cherie has taken the law into her own hands, he sings, and a voice interjects during the song saying that her revenge is not over until she declares it. She tastes it in the chorus where she drinks whiskey for the soul. It goes smoothly, but later it eats you up. At the end, he sings to the man whom she is hunting. Hide yourself somewhere, he tells him, even though he is a raging bull and it is difficult to outrun. There is no mercy where he is going.
He starts off asking who hurts her and that he will hurt them even more. She has buried her secrets six feet underground, and he knows her pain, and he will catch that person if he ever knows who put her there. On “Burn It Down,” Leon Bridges sings the second verse and promises to be her consolation and her shotgun when she needs it the most, to give her a riot, and to turn the city upside down. Angels want their revenge, both men tell her. Kehlani is looking for something softer on “Bullets & Blades,” where she needs to be held by him and be convinced that her ugliness is beauty, and he sings back with her. He tells her about scars that will never heal, about blood that leaves stains, about gold in broken things and beauty in cracks in the paint. These are nice images, but any artist could have done that.
Whiskey is the message conveyed by “Cowgirl,” a card that will not stop, shots all night long until 6 am, beers that she shoots without knowing whose they are, and an invitation for her to try Tennessee. Drinking gets worse in “Born to Die,” where he will keep drinking until his liver and his head have something to say, stay awake until the sun rises red and all barrels run out of drinks, and collect all the people who brought him there for another night. Gunna comes through with a forgettable verse in “High Noon” with ten million from gigs, a hundred thousand for clothing, and five hundred for his wrist, along with a Rari truck delivered with a kit attached. All of this has nothing to do with the topic.
In “Sweet Revenge,” the nineteen-year-old girl who is gone from home has only one aim—to find every man who has ever hurt her, and Shaboozey helps her to do that. She can take the devil out of the pastor. She skins people alive, sends a line of low-down bastards to the grave, and rejects the money which was never the purpose of this errand. She tries it in the chorus, the whiskey for the soul, the thing that goes down smoothly and then eats you up and never lets you go. He is looking for something softer in “Bullets & Blades,” where Kehlani asks to be held and to convince her that her ugly is beautiful, and he gives her back scars that never fade, blood that stains, gold in the pieces, beauty in the cracks of the paint. Those pictures are beautiful, and you can give them to anyone.
“On forty days, forty nights/In the desert, I ain’t no Messiah,” Shaboozey sings on “Bounty On My Head,” and from there, he starts reading Romans all night long and asking somebody for a prayer. God is the only one who forgives people, he decides. A jail cell is better than folding. He promised to change and failed to do it and made bail, and the people around him may need him to be gone. The one thing left unsellable is his heart and soul. He brings the same guilt to “Kissed By an Angel.” His drinking in the morning made his mama cry, and he said that he could fill the dried-up river with her tears. Something rests on his shoulder and speaks to him sweetly, and the devil branded him anyway.
Poison in a silver flask is what kills on “Death of Jeremiah Walker.” The day she killed him, Teyana Taylor had been drinking the whole day, and she watched his face turn purple, arms raised up to the heavens, and his calls to the people he loved. To her it looked like dancing that made her wonder who those people were dancing with. Sam Elliott gets the cooler job on “Don’t Count Down” where he tells the man that his rope is running short and that someone needs to pay for the blood he spilt. All those with whom he rode are dead already, and he has two options and has five seconds to choose one.
He worries about the other lonely man who will console her if she leaves him, then he asks her to stay. The whole room is watching the two of them dancing around the wooden room like angels in the sky. It is a rather generous description of the man sitting alone with the glass. There is a line in “Drunk” about the best pour he has ever had, and it reveals who the woman he has been singing to really is. Then he explains why he drinks. He killed a man, then will be hanged tonight, and he will at least be drunk when it happens.
Shaboozey has heard that it makes coyotes sing ballads and howl like hell, and he decides that maybe he is a bit of a coyote himself. Moonshine gets its own song in “Coyotes Point,” and it knows him well, guides him in the darkness, fills the jars on the shelf. Out in the sagebrush, he is stalking, praying all the time, taking lives and wealth, and finds that everybody he meets has the same death stories as him. He compares himself to the animals, and the comparison works.
Solid (★★★½☆)
Favorite Track(s): “If I Was an Outlaw,” “Drunk,” “Kissed By an Angel”