John Wolfington

TIME OUT NY REVIEWPerhaps predictably given its title, a certain tension characterizes “Danger,” the first song on John Wolfington’s six-years-in-the-coming second album. “My love?/?These are dangerous times,” he sings in a voice that tries to be steely yet bears a slight quaver. By the end of the track, though, you realize Wolfington’s battle has already ended: Something monumental has been lost.Whether that sense of loss, which permeates this shadowy, arrestingly simple album, is personal or much larger remains a mystery. Crisply recorded with Steve Shelley on drums and Two Dollar Guitar’s Tim Foljahn on bass, the songs on American Dreamsicle appear in the order they were written, between 2001, when Wolfington left NYC by car for L.A., and 2006, a year after he’d returned. So it’s hard not to imagine the record as a portrait of a posteverything land—crushed emotions, of a piece with Neil Young’s “On the Beach,” as a lens through which to view a wasted culture. On “Rainbows” and “Walk,” two of the album’s most bittersweet songs, Wolfington seems to acknowledge that there’s little left to fight for besides happy memories and a resigned peace of mind. On the album closer, “Naked Truth,” he connects the personal and political with bruising ease: “You just shattered my eyes?/?I wouldn’t know how to say goodbye to you… Dropping a bomb is like telling a lie.” It’s a quietly devastating end to a coolly affecting album.—Mike Wolf, TIME OUT NY