Ike Reilly Assassination, The Spine Stealers

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Grant Herbek

Ike Reilly

$20 ($18 adv.).

media release: The Ike Reilly Assassination will touring in the Midwest as a part of their annual St. Patrick’s Week Celebration. These shows showcase the full power of Reilly’s band, including the addition of his sons on vocals and guitar. They’ll be digging deep into their own catalog as well as performing songs apropos to the holiday by bands like The Pogues and others.

Libertyville, IL-based genre-bending singer-songwriter Ike Reilly released his eighth studio album, Because the Angels, in October 2021, via Nashville-based label Rock Ridge Music. Recorded at Reilly’s own Diamond City Studio in Libertyville, Illinois and Fat Studio in Grayslake, Illinois, the album was produced by Reilly and Phil Karnats (Secret Machines, Polyphonic Spree) and was mixed in New York City by Mario McNulty (David Bowie, Prince, Julian Lennon). 

Of Reilly's live show, Twin Cities Media said: "Ike Reilly doesn’t play rock and roll. He tells stories using the medium of rock and roll. Some songs are autobiographical. More are about the common folks rolled under by a rapidly advancing world…this uncanny eye for identifying the offbeat, the bent and flawed folks among us.  He tells those stories without judgment. He simply shines a light and asks us to understand. That’s a pretty potent antidote for much of the world’s wrongs these days. My friend Paul summed it up nicely on the way out the door.  ‘That man plays some righteous rock and roll.’  He sure does.” 

This compelling batch of Reilly songs on Because the Angels required both a lighter touch and a ferocity that mirror the depth of Reilly’s writing and the varied nature of his songs. Of his work, Reilly dismisses it and says, “My songs are either lies or apologies.”

Two singles preceded the album’s release date. Second single, “Racquel Blue,” premiered at Holler, who lauded the tune's "story of an acid washed journey... the song captures some of Reilly's sharpest storytelling."  Blown-out speakers, marijuana shoes, tire fires, and abandoned driers all litter the suicide highways in the final track of Because the Angels, the epic “Racquel Blue.” This broken-beat, dubstep-tinged folk song could be on the soundtrack to some lost spaghetti western, but the song itself is too powerful and majestic to take a back seat to any film. An unlikely place for “hooks,” “Racquel Blue” has one of Reilly’s most timeless and memorable choruses, and a haunting group vocal “B” section, sung by Reilly’s own children, that generates communal singing wherever “Racquel Blue” is performed or played.

“Trick of the Light,” the first single, premiered at Glide Magazine, who praised the track’s “anthemic family harmonies brimming with hope and good vibes despite the darker questions about faith, hope, family, money, and fate.” “Trick of the Light” is a dark-pop-celebration of family dysfunction. Here, we find Reilly ironically sharing lead vocal duties with three of his own children. 

Of the shared lead vocals with his sons, Reilly said, “My boys singing on this album with us came about for really no other reason than we were f*cking locked up together during this pandemic. I had to take to Internet hustling-busking-begging to make ends meet, and the boys joined me on The Ike Reilly Family Quarantine Hour. We got comfortable singing together, and when we cut some of these songs, it felt natural for them to sing with the band on many of them. Their vocals really helped shape this record.”  Like all related singers, there is a distinctive quality in the voices of Shane, Kevin, and Mickey Reilly -- similarly raspy to their father yet not as torn up. This genetic connection is even more compelling given the seeking nature of “Trick of the Light.”

Like on all of Reilly’s records, the imagery, the locations, and the characters are authentic, unique, and unforgettable. On “Ashes to Ashes,” the band slams away and yet still holds down the groove to this Ray-Charles-on-speed track. As the band rocks, rolls, and rumbles, Reilly sings of the cursed and the blessed, the loved and the hurt, and he assures us that nobody escapes death. Sure, it’s dark, but ya might die trying not to move to this track. Because the Angels is home to racist girlfriends, killer cops, drunken candidates, swindled mothers, slandered brothers, and struggling lovers, all right here in the modern era. The locations are mostly American -- the police shooting and subsequent riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin inspired “Someday Tonight.” In “The Muhammad Ali Museum,” the lonesome main character, after searching unsuccessfully for weed in downtown Louisville, decides to go into the Ali Museum and is brought to new depths of anguish as he compares his own mundane life to the life of The Champ. 

Since his explosive major label debut, Salesmen and Racists, Reilly has been creating rebellious punk/folk/country/blues-influenced rock ’n’ roll records that are poetic and cinematic. Critical praise for his work has been plentiful, and he has garnered a wildly loyal fan base -- from faithful fans in the dirty bars and rock clubs in the middle of nowhere to legendary authors. Reilly’s songs have a unique universality that affects people. Author Stephen King wrote that Reilly’s travel band saga, “Boltcutter,” was “the best new song to come out of the Trump era.”  The New York Times called Reilly’s longtime band, The Assassination, one of the best live bands in America. 

Reilly is the host of the Facebook livestream series, the “Ike Reilly Family Q-Hour.” Spawned in the early days of the pandemic, it quickly became the stuff of legend; Reilly continues to perform in this way occasionally. Part traditional livestream performance and part variety hour, it features family members (who might climb in through the window behind Reilly to join him “on stage” in his living room), special guests from afar, and plenty of Reilly-esque stories between songs. As Cracker’s David Lowery wrote about Reilly’s livestreams: “You and your family basically need your own variety TV show. It’s like a f***ed-up Partridge family, while remaining family-friendly. You have the best livestream going.” The Daily Herald in Chicago deemed it “eclectic,” while Good Times Santa Cruz called it “the most compelling and watchable recurring quaranstream out there.”