Forged in the aftershock of a series of seismic, life-altering events, Pennsylvanian songwriter Langhorne Slim’s fifth album finds him at full throttle. Forehead vein bulging, he recalls pained stories and testosterone-fuelled trips through the confused passion of post-breakup self-evisceration. Slim also kicked his drug and alcohol problems and relocated to Nashville before The Spirit Moves was recorded, and makes up for its basic Americana melodies and breathy melodrama with a raw and raucous delivery. Songs are swamped in sensory overload: there’s another man’s musk drenched all over the pillows on Whisperin’; the “sweat and the blood and the piss” ooze from the febrile Wolves; and on Put It Together, the phlegm from all the chest-beating and hollering is palpable. For all the potency of Slim’s feelings, however, the album’s downfall is that it is musically and lyrically as well-trodden as his battered, beating heart.
