Dance Till All The Stars Come Down

Album review

Three decades into the career of the Lilac Time, albums including 2015's No Sad Songs and 2019's Return to Us found Stephen Duffy and band (typically brother Nick and wife Claire) settled into a reflective, earnest folk-rock that made a point of both addressing sociopolitical tensions and championing hope. With societal woes only worsening in the interim with events like the COVID-19 pandemic and increased economic inequality, 11th album Dance Till All the Stars Come Down continues in that vein thematically. However, while the aforementioned releases traversed orchestral and more rustic country- and folk-inspired arrangements, Dance Till All the Stars Come Down puts even more emphasis on sentiment by eliminating conventional bass and drums and by further stripping back instrumentation to acoustic guitar with touches of pedal steel and occasional banjo. Opener "Your Vermillion Cliffs" wraps rhymed credos like "It's not what happens to you/It's how you react" in a striding campfire folk before the more wistful "The Long Way" reflects on decades past, when things looked like they were getting better only to eventually reverse course again ("This may be as good as it gets/And don’t waste time having regrets"). That song closes its eventually harmonized verses by stressing the importance of finding your people. Along with album contributor Ben Peeler, the Duffys pick up the tempo for jauntier reminiscence "Candy Cigarette" ("Nothing sweet is free") and cautionary waltz "Adiós and Goodnight" ("We all need to sing in times of such sorrow"), but most of the songs here embrace a reflective midtempo as lyrics seek -- and usually find -- a positive outlook. With its layered guitars, lap steel, and plucked banjo, an exception may be the closer, "The Band That Nobody Knew," a melancholy meditation on the unreliability of memory, individually and especially culturally. On the whole, Dance Till All the Stars Come Down's elegant and poignant protest makes for a strong and timely inaugural outing for the Lilac Time's own Poetica label.
© Marcy Donelson /TiVo