Tom Stevens, Home.

I'm guessing the set containing "people who remember who Tom Stevens is" is getting awfully small in 2007. Stevens joined the legendary Long Ryders 
(who pre-dated the whole alt-country thing by 5-10 years or so) during the recording of that band's legendary Native Sons lp in 1983, and immediately 
became that band's "secret weapon". Every Long Ryders album going forward would have one or two Tom Stevens-penned songs on it (the rest were by 
frontman Sid Griffin or guitarist Steven McCarthy), and like the Ryders' version of George Harrison, Stevens always threatened to steal the show from 
his more prolific bandmates by writing and singing better than them in his brief chance at the limelight.

Stevens has been pretty much out of the music loop since the Ryders called it a day in 1987. He self-released a couple of solo discs 10 years ago, but 
that was it. All of that makes Home all the more this year's head-scratching "where the HELL has THIS talent been hiding" disc so remarkable. One might 
suppose that this record is drenched in familiar Americana "No Depression" motifs. One would assume wrong. Stevens is well-versed in a variety of rock 
idioms, and seems to be able to find his muse where Gram Parsons, Lou Reed, and Alex Chilton all hang out to shoot the breeze. The album-opening "Ghost 
Train" starts off with an effects-drenched guitar strum and an echoing, Duane Eddy guitar riff, while Stevens sings in an almost hushed, dreampop tone. 
On "Death Wish", he comes up with a song that sounds like Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers covering something from an early Mark Lanegan solo record. "In 
The Basement" is a scorching miracle of a countrified rock, opening with a searing Parsons-esque slide guitar figure and then breaking out a 
perfectly-placed banjo in the verse. To prove he isn't a one-trick pony on the slide, on "Away From The Great Cold City", he damn near sounds like he's 
starting an April Wine tune before swinging into the gorgeous verse. None of that quite prepares the senses for the surreal, almost psychedelic swirl of 
"Flying Out Of London In The Rain" which is absolutely one of the most stirring and flat-out gorgeous songs of 2007.

A couple of final notes on this. I think Stevens plays all the instruments here, and that is no mean feat. Usually in such one-man-band settings, you 
can hear deficiencies on one instrument or another, but here Stevens plays some amazing guitar figures, tosses off brilliant basslines, and even rips 
through the drum sections as if any of those instruments were his "natural" choice. Another note: there's a lot of reasons to be cynical and pissy about 
the state of popular music nowadays. Then a guy like Tom Stevens records an absolutely breathtaking album like Home in his...well, home, and it reminds 
you that the best thing about rock music is it's accessibility and populism. Tom Stevens would've recorded these songs, and they'd exist whether any of 
us heard 'em or not. But now you know they're out there, and if you hear something you like, paypal him a few bucks and support a guy who is truly doing 
things the right way.

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