Album Review: Lance Cowan - The Air That You Breathe
Through eleven carefully curated songs, Lance Cowan continues to emerge from the shadows as a songwriter of substance. THE AIR THAT YOU BREATHE is a gifted collection threaded by a desire to make sense of some of life’s basics. Creating a reassured and relatable aura is the basis for these songs to transcend a writer’s mind into the wandering instincts of an active listener. A time honoured tradition shaped by Prine, Van Zandt, Clarke et al is polished by the pen of Cowan and transmitted via an affable tone and a band pumping oxygen into the finished producr. This record ascends over time rewarding those with the urge to acutely engage.
This is the third Cowan album since 2024 and one destined to find fresh ears. It is also the third professional writing guise following a lengthy career seeking the truth as a journalist, spinning the truth as a publicist and now purveying the truth as a creative tour de force. Paradoxically or consequentially, the path has entered a lush meadow.
This album scores highly through a detected structure - by design or not. It kicks off with the ambiguity of ‘Love’ and ‘Pieces of Love’, seemingly setting the scene for what is to be unveiled when the lens zoom in. Early signs of a stellar soundtrack emerge exemplified by the soothing sound of mandolin adorning the second of this duo.
Character comes to the fore as the theme moves from the macro to the micro. A veil of mystery surrounds the observation piece ‘Where They’d Go’ as you adjust your antennae to zone in on Cowan’s words. The vocals almost slip in spoken mode for the title track ‘The Air That You Breathe’ as a character is explicitly dissected with the moral of it never being too late to make it surfacing at the end after life’s raw basics have been exposed. Explicitness moves onto a different level with ‘William Cooper Smith’, a Marshall in Wild West Arkansas depicted as a honest man meeting a common folk story ending of a bullet accompanied with the epitaph ‘when the good lord comes calling, all they take is your name’.
We then get back to wistful musing and the pairing of ‘The One You Love’ and ‘Be With You’. Here layers tenderly peel away with a heartfelt sweet melody prevalent in the first and sensual steel drifting across the airwaves in the second.
On a record of numerous peaks, the case for the highpoint intensifies as ‘Closer to Truth’ and ‘When He Was Here’ move the pieces onto a different plane. The first was an early standout as Cowan finds his groove helped by prominent piano and honing in on ‘unfriendly fire’. Yet it is the wonderful melodic sadness permeating the words and tune of the latter that settles as the moment the connection is sealed and emotions begin to melt.
If we haven’t already been spoilt, the juxtaposing of ‘The Road’ and ‘Home with You’ guides this serene collection to a worthy conclusion. Accordion assists the former ferment into an expression of human loneliness with the pain felt in Cowan’s words. But after this strong message, a high is dealt and found in the jolly finale of the latter where fiddle escorts us to a sign off place where it will be alright in the end.
THE AIR THAT YOU BREATHE brims with nuggets casting Lance Cowan as a wily observer and smart investor in words. Space to absorb is created and each song finds it niche in a search for truth at its most basic level. Years of working with luminaries such as Lyle Lovett, Nanci Griffith and Joe Ely has paid off. This album of sumptuous effect will feed the fix of any songwriting junkie.
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