This is a love letter written too late, a howl into the empty stretch of highway between what was and what might've been. Through every note, Currin conjures the ache of the man who gave everything but was given nothing back but silence. His references to Nashville and Ohio aren't just for geographical specificity. They serve as emotional milestones, mile markers of a romance that seemed like it would last forever but stalled along the way at some point.
"If she would have me, I'd be here to stay / forever off the highway," he sings not just wistfully but with a gravity that implies he's still parked on the shoulder, engine idling, waiting to be saved. And there's no denying that Currin takes a personal stake in the song. The song is born out of a breakup so profound that it not only broke his heart but also the very lens through which he sees the world. "I thought it was her," he admits, "I don't know if I'll ever be the same." That sort of hard truth is uncommon in contemporary music and even less common when it's delivered with this much stillness and sincerity.
Fans of Jason Isbell, Ryan Adams, and Counting Crows will be right at home here. But "The Highway" is not a pastiche, a slavish copy of an earlier process of feeling and using language. It's the deeply original sound of an artist standing at the crossroads of grief and grace. Serving as a preview of his forthcoming ninth full-length, "Ghost Town," dropping August 1, "The Highway" is a perfect introduction. It is a bleak, bleak picture of love lost, encased in the dust and distance of life on the road. Nate Currin isn't just telling tales–he's living them, and he's kind enough to allow us to feel every bump along the way with him.
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