It’s not always lonely in Lonelyville

 By Henry Lipput

Dusty Wright pulled a fast one on us.

Before he announced his latest album, he released three singles: two would become album tracks including “Stare into the Sun” which he described as “an homage to carefree days playing underneath the canopy of the sun” and a non-album track was a cover of Buffalo Springfield’s “Sit Down I Think I Love You.”

Of the album itself, Lonelyville (Pet Rock), Wright’s concept of isolation became the underlying narrative. There are of course examples of this in the title song in which following a routine takes the place of having a relationship (“I find peace in simple things/Repeating the same small things/My routine keeps me sharp/Melting away my pain … and loss”). The situation in “Making New Friends” is even more grim: “I’m playing with mud again/Watch me build my new friends.

But don't let the album’s title and the stated concept put you off because many songs on Lonelyville are about love in its many forms. It’s also a dramatic departure from Wright’s 2020 album Can Anyone Hear Me? which was full of protest songs about what we’re doing to the planet and each other.

One of my favorite songs on Lonelyville is “Unbearable Brightness” which asks the musical question: How bright does your love shine when it's not returned? (“But I don’t know what to say/I don’t know what to do/But I know you know/Just how you make me …  feel.”) It’s a situation many of us have been in and it’s a glorious feeling until we’re eventually shut down.

Despite these disappointments, the message of “To Find Love” is you have to share love to find love: “You have to love in spite of it all/You have to stand up after you fall/You have to give in to it all/You have to love to find love.”

Love can also be scary when it seems we’re in too deep too quickly. This is the situation in “Riptide of Love”: “Swimming to the surface/Trying to catch our breath/But I’m not certain/If we’re got our best/Caught in a riptide of love/Don’t know if we’re under or above.”

So how do you get out of Lonelyville? As four wise men once sang, all you need it love. Love is the exit ramp from Lonelyville and it's shouted loud and clear on the closing track, "Leaving Lonelyville," like a conductor calling for the final boarding of a train.