Eagle Rock Fire

Though he hails from Arkansas and now lives in Los Angeles, Joe Purdy makes music that evokes a High Plains lonesomeness, suggesting desolate highways and gritty prairie towns. His plaintive vocals and finely etched songs have earned him a loyal following over the past decade. Eagle Rock Fire should please his faithful, but it also deserves to expand his audience beyond the confines of folkie cultdom. Purdy projects a hardscrabble integrity that doesn’t allow for false optimism or cheap hooks. His latest album–recorded on analog equipment at his home studio–offers an assortment of poignant vignettes framed by ruefully sweet melodies. The characters populating tunes like “L.A. Livin,” “Waiting for Loretta Too Long,” and “Good Gal Away” are country-born exiles coping with broken hearts in the big city. “Ba Girl” is a standout among Purdy’s lost-love songs, a wry toast to faithless women and loyal dogs. On the title track, he taps into a vein of pure longing worthy of Woody Guthrie or Hank Williams. The dancing pedal steel lines of “Jolly” Chris John Hillman on “That Diamond Ring” add some sunshine to the melancholy atmosphere prevailing on this starkly moving set of tunes.