Mat Kearney has always been a bit ahead of the curve as far
as pop music was concerned. In 2006, he burst onto the scene with Nothing Left
to Lose, a lingering set of songs that blended elements of pop, folk, and
hip-hop into a sonic cocktail that sounded like no one else in the industry.
The album brought a bit of mainstream success—for the summer pop tune,
"Nothing Left to Lose"—but the most interesting songs were the ones
where Kearney bent or blended genres on a whim. With spoken word or rap-driven
songs like "Undeniable," "Bullet," "Can't Break Her
Fall," "In the Middle," and "Renaissance," Kearney not
only marked off his own unique corner of the sensitive Greys Anatomy balladeer
market, but he also established a charismatic personality that rarely comes
through on debut albums. The freestyle nature of his rap sections allowed
Kearney to go much deeper into autobiographical territory than he would
normally have been able to do with a three or four-minute pop song, and as he
told us his stories of growing up, falling in love, getting in car accidents,
and launching a music career, he suddenly felt like a guy we'd been listening
to for five or 10 years—rather than for just 13 tracks.
I've remained interested in Kearney's story ever since, but
it would be inaccurate to claim that his next few records were as unique,
nuanced, or autobiographical as Nothing Left to Lose. 2009's City of Black and
White ditched the hip-hop aesthetic entirely, in favor of Laurel Canyon-favored
folk-pop. 2011's Young Love, meanwhile, was produced
like a hip-hop record, with booming beats and a small handful of samples, but
pulled its punches rather than allow Kearney to return to his roots. Songs like
"Ships in the Night" and "Chasing the Light" had sing-speak
verses that recalled Nothing Left to Lose, but even on those numbers, Kearney
still seemed hesitant to go full-rap or be as daring as he once was. And ultimately, Young
Love could be summed up less as a return to form for Kearney, and more as a
harbinger of the kind of bombastic pop that fun. would popularize on the next
year's Some Nights.
This narrative explains precisely why I'm so taken with Just
Kids, Mat Kearney's fourth major label LP, and his first in three and a half
years. For the first time since Nothing Left to Lose, Kearney seems comfortable
jumping genres again. He reveals that fact right away, dropping a rap over the
militaristic beat of opening track "Heartbreak Dreamer." It's a
potent introductory statement, flitting between a sample of childish singsong
chant, Kearney's lyrical verses, and an eye-of-the-storm chorus. When the song
hits another sample—a two minute excerpt of Anis Mojgani's moving beat poem"Shake the Dust"—the song ascends to a higher place. The poem, an
inspirational paean for the forgotten and downtrodden, meshes perfectly with
the handclaps, drumbeats, and keyboard melodies of "Heartbreak Dreamer," and feels like it
could have been recorded for the specific purpose of being used in this song.
The fact that is wasn't only further establishes "Dreamer"
as Kearney's most adventurous and ambitious piece of songwriting in nine years.
For its part, Just Kids is never as melodically lovely or
lush as City of Black and White, and it can't quite match Young Love on a hook-for-hook basis. The record shows its flaws when Kearney tries to do a song without a
spoken word segment, with numbers like "Heartbeat," "Let it Rain,"
and "Miss You" arguably tilting toward generic pop territory. That's surprising
for Kearney, especially considering the fact that Young Love made a play for
the mainstream without sacrificing the quirkiness and charisma that has always
made him great as an artist. This record's plain pop songs aren't bad at all, but they do sound like
standard radio fare, which has never been a problem before. The
ballads aren't quite as striking this time around, either, though numbers like
"Ghost" and "The Conversation" are still more than welcome
additions to the Kearney catalog.
Where Just Kids really does thrive
is in its commitment to storytelling. This is the closest Kearney has ever come
to replicating the feel of the jagged and personal Nothing Left to Lose, and
that fact shines through when he ditches the traditional pop song format and
goes off in exploration of different genres. It's not just hip-hop, either: the
title track, an autobiographical song about Kearney and his wife, has an
unhurried R&B feel that recalls both Drake and Frank Ocean, while the
booming "Billion" has elements of everything from EDM to African
chant to 80s funk-pop. Both "Moving On" and "Shasta," meanwhile, play
around with vocoder in a fashion that nods to Bon Iver and Kanye West.
By throwing all of these different elements at the canvas,
Kearney is able to mold song structures to his will. And just like he once bent
genres to tell audiences who he was in the first place, here, he's expanding
his story further. As the album title implies, the core narrative here is about
growing up. The title track illustrates his earliest music influences (Bob
Marley and Wu Tang Clan, to name a few), while recounting his first experiences
laying down raps "over instrumental tapes." "One Black
Sheep" starts with Kearney in Oregon, feeling like the guy who will never
fit in, and ends with him heading off to Nashville to pursue his dreams. And
"Los Angeles" is like Butch Walker's "Going Back/Going
Home," a full career manifesto that takes Kearney from a "thousand
cap room…only eight people came" to hearing his name called on Letterman.
For all of its different threads, Nothing Left to Lose was, at its core, a record about growing up and finding a place to belong. It's a theme that Kearney has explored again and again throughout his career, from a hometown slipping away in the City of Black and White, to one last carefree summer of Young Love. Just Kids continues the story, though now, all of those old stomping grounds feel a bit different. That's intentional: Kearney knows that his listeners have grown up along with him, and that most of us have now traded unpredictable youth for adulthood routine. As a result, Just Kids is Kearney's most openly nostalgic record ever, an album that gazes back fondly on the places we used to call home, the people we used to call best friends, or the dreams we used to carry around with us.
"Hometown remind me where I
come from," he begs in the reverb-soaked beauty, "Shasta," before reminding himself that "we've got miles left to go, to a place that I don't know." Those two lines perfectly sum up what Just Kids is all about. It's a record meant for looking back at all of the good times, while simultaneously recognizing that there are so many good times still to come. It's for those mornings when you check Timehop and get warped back to high school antics or summertime adventures, or to the people you lost touch with along the way. But it's also a record for cherishing the people in your life now, and for soundtracking all of the remarkable adventures still waiting further on down this big old dusty highway that we call life. Springsteen has always said that he followed specific themes, characters, and stories throughout his entire career. Not enough artists make those kinds of interconnected discographies anymore, but Kearney is absolutely one of them, and Just Kids is a vital new chapter, both for the songwriter and for the people who came of age listening to his songs. It's one of the first great records of 2015.
