The Family’s new album is the kind that should not exist but does. An aura of mystery surrounds it because of the strange times and circumstances in which it was created, and the time lag before the LP was released. The listening experience resembles digging a hole in the garden for one’s tomato plant and discovering a mystery box in the soil, or flipping through one’s record collection and finding a gem of a release one does not remember buying or even seeing before at the store.
Delusions of Grandeur was recorded at the legendary Muscle Shoals’ FAME Studios (Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett) during the pandemic. That was a surreal time. We were isolated from others, except maybe our family. In this case, the Family were all musicians and songwriters: the elders are James LeBlanc (Travis Tritt, Jason Aldean) and Angela Hacker (winner of Season 5 of USA Network’s Nashville Star). They are married and have two children from previous relationships, stepbrothers Dylan LeBlanc (son of James) and Bay Simpson (son of Angela), who grew up together. The nine tracks reflect the shared headspace of those struggling with past sins, living in a confined present, and uncertain about what the future may bring. The songs are simultaneously hopeful and despairing.
This paradox begins at the beginning. The first song is titled “The End”, which notes the story is already over before it begins. The male narrator is waiting for the end of the world. That was a common feeling back then, and it still is for different reasons. The lyrics are elegiacally beautiful and the electric guitar riffs seductive. The singer entices us to give up and give in to the temptations of worldly desires. If the fix is in, one just might need a fix to get by; the motto of all addictions.
The out-of-kilter chronology continues with “History of Things to Come”, whose lead female vocals and acoustic accompaniment reveal the variety of sounds contained in this self-contained musical mélange. The isolation brought about by the pandemic can be found in the “lonely girl” cadences of Hacker’s voice and the ambiguous bleakness of the lyrics. The future dictates that everything returns to dust.
The other songs mostly continue in this push-and-pull vein of possibility and gloom. There is an ache in the singers’ voices on “Everybody Loves You Now” because one knows now is temporary, and slashing guitar riffs on “Pick Your Poison” because the outcome of the battle between desire and despondency never really ends.
A moment of peace arrives in the band’s a capella rendition of Stephen Stills’ “Find the Cost of Freedom”, made famous by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young back in 1970 as the B-side of “Ohio”. The Family joins together in celebration, or maybe more precisely, in commemoration, of our shared mortality. One is only free of life’s shackles in death.
There is no song called “Delusions of Grandeur” on the album, nor is there specific lyrical context for the title. Apparently, the album was named this because the Family understand the financial (and other) risks of putting out a new release on their own independent label from a previous time when pessimism was a virtue. After all, it felt honest. The Family’s record is an artifact from the COVID years, suggesting the days of the future can be best accessed through the present by remembering the past.