Chris Whitley: Living With The Law

Here’s an album we very likely would never have heard had a friend not told us, “It’s the closest thing you’re going to find to that Daniel Lanois album you like so much.”

Indeed, Living With The Law was produced by Malcolm Burn and engineered by Mark Howard, both Lanois protégés who had been involved with Acadie and other productions. But instead of applying the sound to established legends like Robbie Robertson and Bob Dylan, this time the recipient was somebody brand new on any scene. Chris Whitley was a good-looking kid with long hair who specialized in open tunings on National acoustic and occasional electric guitars, with a voice that flipped easily from growl to falsetto and back. The rhythm section was the familiar Lanois crew of Daryl Johnson and Ronald Jones, with Bill Dillon adding the more straightforward guitar parts.

From the opening “Excerpt”—a few seconds of tuning up—the overall sound is dusty, wide open space, rooms with bare light bulbs, radios that go in and out of reception (used to good effect over the fade of “Dust Radio”). The titles say a lot: “Big Sky Country”, “Make The Dirt Stick”, “Bordertown”. “Phone Call From Leavenworth” is voice and guitar, as a prison ballad should be; “Look What Love Has Done” is an excellent display of his vocals. But while blues is the driver, the songs are catchy and cross genre; even the urgent “Kick The Stones” was used in the soundtrack of Thelma & Louise. “Poison Girl” is a wonderful rocker, but the best is still the defiant yet hurt “I Forget You Every Day”.

It took Chris Whitley a long time to do a follow-up, and by then he was all about distortion and sonic yowl. He would eventually get back to basics, but his bad health caught up with him, and he never quite followed on the commercial promise of Living With The Law. If only we could remember who it was that told us about the album in the first place.

Chris Whitley Living With The Law (1991)—3½