We wish people things. We wish them happiness. We wish them health. We wish them well. If they received all our wishes, they'd need nothing else, really. It would be an all-encompassing gift. Cory Chisel, and his band the Wandering Sons, seem to hope for very little for the people in their songs - the kinds of tokens that we toss around every day, those that we sign off our emails with, those hugs and kisses, the take cares that are just words. They aren't at all functioning, just silly bits of language that we offer. It's something, we think. It's better than nothing. It's a wish for peacefulness, when all there is might be restlessness. It's wishing that they'd find love, when are there is before their friends is a wasteland of battered choices.
Chisel delivers so much insight and so much compassion for the ever-tinkering drama that happens to be the struggle that we're all faced with. It's a struggle that doesn't have to be unpleasant, but it's certainly never too goddamned easy. It just isn't and the way that Chisel lets his precise and soothing voice moves about is something that disproves most, if not all failings or disappointments that may pop up in that drama. When he sings on the non-album track, "I'm Not The Man I Thought You'd Meet," recorded on an earlier session, "We'll chase ecstasy til something breaks," we're all in concert: things will break and that will just add to the melody of the melancholia, or something that rises from it.