Michael McDermott 'St. Paul's Boulevard'
A new Michael McDermott album is always cause for celebration. But St. Paul’s Boulevard, the Chicago-based folk-rock singer-songwriter’s umpteenth album since he burst on the national scene in 1991 as the newest major-label darling, is a particularly welcome release. He embraces the musical warm fuzzies of heartland rock while lyrically chronicling characters struggling to survive on the fictional street for which the album is named. “Won’t you please send back my regards/to all the lost souls stranded/Down on Saint Paul’s Boulevard” McDermott sings in a smoky voice on the haunting title track.
But not all of these songs will bum you out. The first single, “Sick of This Town,” is the sound of catharsis, the playful “Pack the Car” would have worked as a fun single early in McDermott’s career, “Our Little Secret” is a restless rocker starring “a Wisconsin girl, a hotel room … [and] Tom Ford perfume,” and on the album’s penultimate track, he wishes “peace, love and brilliant colors to you all.”
Throughout, McDermott’s flawless band sounds as earnest as he does, as St. Paul’s Boulevard establishes, once and for all, McDermott’s status as a rock and roll survivor. He refused to curl up when it would have been easier to disappear instead of persevere. And now here he is — more than three decades after he released the catchy debut single “A Wall I Must Climb” — and McDermott has released arguably the best album of his career. He no longer seems lost on St. Paul’s Boulevard.
Michael McDermott will play Shank Hall on June 4.
