https://kennytaylor.hearnow.com

Like all great art, the songs in Kenny Taylor’s debut album Daylight produced by Aidan I. Allen, transform individual appetites into expressions of commonality. It’s this articulation of intimacies that invite the listener into particular scenes and sensations. Take the opening lines of “Like Daddy Did,” possibly the most tender song of the album, written in adoring admiration of a father: “Daddy always had a way of fixin’ things / I never could understand. / Ever since I was a little boy / just tried to lend a helping hand. / I always held the flashlight, / the most important job of the night / so daddy could see what he was doing.” 
 
Taylor possesses a casual and exuberant linguistic tendency, exemplified by throwaways, such as the bridge of “Carolina Tags,” about a lover finding expression for that love long after the partner leaves: “Good ideas only come to mind / when you don’t have a piece of paper / they just lie at waste behind a steering wheel / or a pencil with only an eraser.” In the same song, Taylor, always aware of emotional tone, lightens sentimentality with humor: “Think I’m gonna’ find me some old road that goes to nowhere / might even get a tattoo or grow out my hair.” It’s a funny acknowledgement of the rebellious habits we all have after a breakup, which serve as a separate, more erratic, form of expression.   
 
Much like Jason Isbell, Taylor delivers his lyrics wrapped in warmth. His voice is bluesy and blowsy, a rough and untidy perfection. Listen to the wrinkle in cadence as his voice ascends through lyrics, heard distinctly in lines like this one in “Skyline Drive”: “It won’t be as hard when the scars finally heal and I take a deep damn breath.” The delivery beautifully shares the qualities of the content. His voice encodes an entire emotion; the exhaustion conveyed is felt. His guitar mirrors and sometimes augments that feeling, particularly with the perfect fifth slide used in “Won’t You Be Mine (How I Feel),” which makes the song weep and delivers its true pathos. 
 
There is much to admire about Daylight, and there is much to cherish of Taylor’s talents. His levity and his severity, his vulnerability and his callousness, his force, his pungent melodies, his guitar’s ability to take songs where lyrics cannot go, his vivid profusion of imagery, the way his voice quivers with feeling — but especially the way everything is flittered through with love.

~Jack McCarthy

im aidan. music is my life. listen and take a trip inside my head
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