Brooke Billick
Biggers_Infinite Tabernacle_2017_3: Sanford Biggers, Infinite Tabernacle, 2017. HD video installation, dimensions variable, 4:26 minutes. Courtesy the artist and Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York and Aspen. © Sanford Biggers. Photo credit: Object Studies.
There’s a palpable world-weariness that hovers over the 10 songs that form American Darkness, the latest release from Midwestern alt-folk guitarist Dan Tedesco, who will be headlining at The Winnebago on July 11. Maybe it’s a product of the polarizing political climate. As Tedesco sings on the title track/opener: “I can’t promise that you will always
be safe/I can’t promise you won’t be subject to hate.” Later, on the loping, stripped-down “The Wolves Are Running Wild, Tonight,” he idly wonders about the growing number of first-time gun buyers.
Or maybe it’s fueled by a bittersweet nostalgia. Tedesco, who now lives in Des Moines, Iowa, has been at this awhile now — more than long enough to both hone his craft and collect enough personal stories to parse and recall in graceful lyrics that capture everything from a backstage circus to the beginnings of youthful romance.
The quiet, personal ballads are the ones that land hardest. It’s not hard to imagine spilling a few tears into your One Barrel Commuter Ale while “All I Wanted Was a Friend” — a melancholy reminiscence about a childhood connection that never quite came to be — plays in the background. “The Banks of the Mississippi,” meanwhile, captures the agony of the forgotten, beaten-down man left to stare at time and water flowing before him. It’s in these moments of personal poetry that Tedesco shows the best of his songwriting strengths.
