Album Review: Buck Meek, The Mirror

Calling The Mirror a Buck Meek solo album is something of a misnomer, as the Big Thief guitarist has roped in a whole host of collaborators, including his bandmates, Adrianne Lenker and James Krivchenia, and his wife Germaine Dunes, as well as his brother, Dylan Meek, on piano. Oh, and a host of other musicians, including no fewer than four drummers!

Musically, it’s mostly the kind of gentle alt-country that wouldn’t be out of place on a Big Thief album, with a light dusting of electronica to supplement the organic instrumentation on songs like ‘Gasoline’, the winsome and precious ‘Pretty Flowers’, and the ululating ‘Ring Of Fire’. The latter isn’t the Johnny Cash standard, but a plaintive and tender love song wherein Meek notes how, “I see angels fly every night above our bed.”

Guitars get plugged in for the Neil Young-inspired slacker rock of ‘Soul Feeling’, and ‘Worms’ has the catchiest chorus on the entire record, though it’s hidden amid a jazzy break-beat. For the most part, though, it’s all very laidback, even when dealing with darker subject matter, like the does-what-it-says-on-the-tin ‘Demons’, or the Nashville-kissed ‘Can I Mend It?’, a toe-tappingly lovely tale about the dark side of the soul.

Meek’s high register belies some of the bleaker lyrics, as on the stunningly beautiful ‘Heart In The Mirror’, on which he admits, “Lost my voice singing about evil and the people that I lost”. Understatedly powerful stuff.

8/10