Daniel Hutchens

Love Songs For Losers

Autumn Tone

originally published December 13, 2006

Ahhh, those high-and-raspy vocal passages and prickly, blues-drunk guitars. It’s not a long-lost tape of boozy rockers The Faces cutting loose, but Love Songs For Losers is Bloodkin vocalist Daniel Hutchens’ second proper solo album and a most impressive one at that. Recorded over the winter of 2005 in a snow-covered Colorado burg, Love Songs for Losers presents Hutchens at his soul-searching best, pitted before a simple backdrop of acoustic and electric guitar, bass and little percussion.

Though not a concept album per se, there are several elements that Love Songs for Losers keeps coming back to. Blood - be it the adrenaline rush that moves “Love For Speed” or the symbolic menstrual blood brought into play on “Blood From the Rock” - is an equally foreboding and inspirational constant. So is the uncertain destiny of old rock and rollers as mulled over in songs like “Black and White Snapshots at the Bottle Tree Bar." When Hutchens tosses out red-eyed lines like “True love is just like a night spent in a $20 motel / With the front desk believing your alias and you halfway believe it yourself,” the "you" in question would be a true jackass to not believe the guy.

Hutchens always excels when attempting to exorcize those pesky personal demons through song. Though it prefaces his current status as a dad and family man, Love Songs for Losers is still no exception. Nonetheless, more longtime rock-and-roll frontmen should be able to manage a solo album this good every lagging sales quarter or so. (Thankfully it’s no She’s the Boss, nor a Let the Music Do the Talking.)Love Songs for Losers is, though, one of the brightest lights grizzled, real-life rockers have had pointed at them in quite awhile. Both Hutchens and the Athens music ‘scape in general are all the better for that.

Bloodkin is playing at the 40 Watt Club on Friday, Dec. 22.