Stream: Dylan LeBlanc, ‘Cautionary Tale’

Kevin Bronson on January 6th, 2016

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Dylan LeBlanc is only 25, but he sounds uniquely qualified to issue a “Cautionary Tale.” That’s the title of his third album, out Jan. 15 via Single Lock Records, the label founded by Ben Tanner (Alabama Shakes), John Paul White (The Civil Wars) and Will Trapp. Hailed as a wunderkind of Americana on the basis of his first two albums, 2010’s “Pauper’s Field” and 2012’s “Case the Same Old Shadow,” LeBlanc found himself having to “recalibrate” after sliding into a booze-fueled tailspin. The son of country singer James LeBlanc worked with Tanner and White at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Ala., crafting pedal steel-, strings- and keyboard-tinted confessionals that reflect the need, he says, “to let the guilt about the past go and find a new truth within myself.” The result is a radiant collection of songs that showcase LeBlanc’s otherworldly voice — an often-chilling instrument that teeters between world-weary and sweetly hopeful. At LeBlanc’s most intimate moments, you sense he could be communing angels or ghosts, and he has a way of making you hang on every word. “The easy way out / is a dangerous path / and no one knows it like I do,” he sings like a wizened veteran in “Easy Way Out.” On this album, the difficult path has yielded a bounty.

||| Stream: “Cautionary Tale”