Die Midwestern- Arlo McKinley

 

Graham Craycraft

Arlo McKinley, a Cincinnati, OH native was the last signee by the late John Prine. The release of his first major label album (Prine’s Oh Boy Records) is titled Die Midwestern. It discusses life as a Midwesterner, the struggles of the lower hard hit class, and love that seems destined to fail. McKinley is part of a growing singer-songwriter movement with peers such as Tyler Childers and Colter Wall. Pulling from influences such as these two and the late Prine, McKinley has begun to etch out his own voice.

In the first single, “Die Midwestern,” McKinley strikes hard delivering the best song on the album. Mckinley describes the chapter of his life he is currently in. He must get out of the city and state he’s been in his whole life or else he’ll surely succumb to old bad habits. In another great track “Bag of Pills” Mckinley recollects his past addiction and the troubling lengths he went to survive. The song is a journey of bad to worse to complete crumbling like a castle with one too many stones removed. He looks at what life would have been if he had not gotten clean and moved on from the company of many around him whose lives had been destroyed by opioid addiction. 

Unfortunately not every song on the album works. On a few tracks McKinley just can’t find the words or story to tell to make the song work. In a fun sounding but ultimately empty song “Suicidal Saturday Night” he sings about bad choices and being a criminal but fails to deliver any sort of narrative that moves the song forward. “Everyone’s talkin but no one’s sayin a thing” sings McKinley in “The Hurtin’s Done” and sad to say but that is how “Suicidal Saturday Night” feels. The track “Whatever You Want” is a love story that feels like a watered down copy of another song on the album “We Were Alright.”

McKinley is on the right path and the album overall is a victory for the emerging artist. It is an emotional rock strung americana album that for the most part works. If he could broaden the covered subjects and avoid vague ideas he would have greater success and his future endeavors would be killer.