Customer Reviews

The Last Pale Light In The West

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As a big Lucero fan I picked this album up as soon as it came to my attention. I've never been a fan of Cormac McCarthy but the subject matter didn't matter to me. Since picking up the album I did read "Blood Meridian". Without having read the book, though, this is a fantastic album by one of the best songwriters we are lucky enough to have these days.
I highly recommend this to anyone who is a fan of Lucero as well as anyone who enjoys a good singer/songwriter album. And don't let the short tracklist fool you; each song is great.

I'm an English teacher who uses music in both lit and composition classes to spur student interest. I've listened to a great many musical adaptations of literature over the years. I've never come across any that captures the spirit of the work upon which it is based better than does Nichol's adaptation of McCarthy's Blood Meridian. He really nails it. I understand a film version of BM is in the works; the film-makers would do well to approach Mr. Nichols about writing the soundtrack.

Ben Nichols has delivered a winner on his solo debut. It doesn't rock as hard as a Lucero album, but instead leans more toward being a singer/songwriter album. If you like Ben's work with Lucero, you owe it to yourself to check out LAST PALE LIGHT IN THE WEST.

This short album is a wonderful accompaniment to Cormac McCarthy's excellent novel. The album of songs is gritty, hard, and uncompromising. You don't have to be a fan of the novel to enjoy this music at all. I think you will like this work a lot. Definitely pick it up if you have a chance.

To start off I am a big Lucero fan and follow what ever they are doing and when Ben Nichols made this solo album I was all about it. It is written and characterized from the book Blood Meridian. So the songs are more like stories about the characters in the book instead of his own words/experiences but regardless the subject, the album is awsome and a little more "old west" sounding than Lucero's stuff but I like it.
In short, Ben Nicoles cannot write a bad song and this album further prooves that! Makes me want to drink some whiskey, get into a fight then fall off a horse! Since I liked the album so much I am currently reading Blood Meridian and so far the book is rad!! Music fits it perfect.

Good job Ben!

I would buy anything Ben wrote. My boyfriend bought this album for me and I love it. I look forward to anything else he or Lucero will do. I also bought the book Blood Meridian after hearing Ben read the Bookery. Love it

I bought this album after a friend sent a couple small clips of songs. Great songwriting paired with an outstanding gravely voice is my best description. The production alone is fabulous and not compressed as is so much of today's "music".

My wife says Ben Nichols' voice reminds her of Steve Earle's so there's my best comparison. This is now a go to disc for enjoyment among 500 or so CDs in the rack. Wish I could say the same for most of the others.

Many alt country and gothic Americana artists have cited Cormac McCarthy as a source of inspiration, Ben Nichols of Lucero is the first to directly reference Blood Meridian, although Antic Clay/Myssouri comes close in several songs.

This is a nice EP, but there are some glaring anachronisms in the lyrics.

The title song mentions Glanton's gang being armed with Navy Colts, which were not invented until 1851. A year after the ferry massacre.

In the song "Chambers", he refers to Glanton's "naked native scouts". Nice that he is dedicated to politically correct references to First Americans, but to fit with the mood and time period of the novel, he should have said "Indian" or "Injun" scouts. Not to mention that the Delawares Glanton employed as scouts would not have been naked, as this tribe had been 'civilized' since the Revolutionary War era.

Also, in the song Toadvine, he mentions Toadvine losing his ears in Omaha, which was not even founded until 4 years after the main events of the novel (and Toadvine's death). McCarthy did not specify where Toadvine lost his ears. Nichols also seems to misunderstand how and why Toadvine lost his ears, implying it was in a fight ("Left 'em bleeding in the mud"), when it was actually, in all likelihood, a punishment for a crime. He also gives a wistful, melancholy, regretful mood to Toadvine, which he certainly did not have in the novel.

In Tobin, the character seems to be a former traveling preacher, but in the novel, he is an actual defrocked priest of the Catholic church. This puts a very different slant on the character.

Small details, but if he's going to make a record cashing in on a revered classic of literature, he should do his research a bit better. Those details probably won't matter unless you are a Blood Meridian fan, but I'm betting most buyers of this EP will be just that.

I still like the music, though I'd prefer to hear what someone like David Eugene Edwards (Also a McCarthy fan) of 16 Horsepower and Woven Hand could do with Blood Meridian. Nichols seems to lack the powerful innovative musical imagination of Edwards. Edwards would have made the story of Blood Meridian into a mind boggling musical epic. These songs by Nichols, heartfelt as they are, only scrape the surface of the content of Blood Meridian.

The songs on this EP aren't that much different from each other. The music doesn't seem entirely period appropriate for the 1850s, as I think it should, as a sort of soundtrack for Blood Meridian. It brings to mind small honkytonk bars of the mid 20th century rather than sprawling landscapes and dim saloons of the mid 19th. Also, sometimes the harshness of Nichols' voice seems overdone. I like harsher vocals, but this seems a little forced. There's almost a constipated grunt to his vocals at times.

It's a good EP. Don't get me wrong, but I think I would have rated it several stars higher if it was not so closely tied to Blood Meridian. It doesn't quite fill the boots of that giant of a western story.