As I have said multiple times within my reviews, I rarely read press releases until after I have listened to the music, and I was stunned by the emotion, beauty and pain within these songs, and when I read the presser, I understood why. Like many teenagers, Caleb Nunez was given a cheap guitar and spent many hours practicing, although unlike many he was forced to do so in the barn as he was forbidden from doing so in the house. He spent decades writing songs intended to spread love, but on the night of Thanksgiving 2020 the exact opposite happened when he was shot in the head by a random attacker in Asheville, North Carolina. For the next five years, he wandered Tennessee on his motorcycle, confused, and learning anew how to survive, and it took until early 2025 for him to decide to get sober.
Producer and label boss Dan Emery came across Caleb through his friend and photographer Zach Orbin. They arranged to meet a coffee shop, and Caleb arrived on a motorcycle wearing a tattered vest, an eye patch, and no shoes, at which point Dan knew he was onto something. This album was the first time Caleb had ever been recorded and it is worth hearing his experience, “With a fancy can mic in front of my face, and a mic’ed guitar, I enjoyed singing under the magnolia tree while being treated organically as crickets and cicadas sang along with… a blazing-hot July night under the stars, for a true live field recording. Truly unique, especially the microphone-eared mannequin head in the middle of the yard, grabbing all the night’s sounds!”
He may be rough, he may have been through the wringer, but Caleb Nunez has got through it all and somehow lived to tell the tale. There is a rough beauty within these songs which are difficult to describe, but I can only imagine the wonder going through Emery as he realised, he was capturing lightning in the bottle. The person I keep being reminded of is Dr. John, a rough rasp telling us the truth as Caleb takes us on a journey few of us would have survived. I often describe modern music as plastic, throwaway, disposable, but what we have here is something hewn from Swamp Kauri (Google it), as he goes back in time and drags out emotion and power in a way which should not be possible for someone who has never recorded before that night.
I have been fortunate to have heard every album in this series, so feel somewhat qualified when I say that this is the best one yet. Remarkable in so many ways, this really is music for the connoisseur who wants to discover something which is massively layered and complex, even though it is just one man and his guitar, telling his tales. Truly incredible.
Rating: 10/10
Links:
https://anticorpmusic.com/