Buffalo Nichols

Saturday, June 22, 7-10pm

WYLDE Hudson
35 S 3rd St
Hudson, NY 12534

On his second album, The Fatalist, Carl “Buffalo” Nichols does things with the blues that might catch you off guard. There’s 808 programming, chopped up Charley Patton samples, washes of synth. There’s a consideration of the fullness of the sonic stage and the atmospherics of the music that can only come with a long engagement with electronic music. But this is no gimmicky hybrid or attempt to turn the blues into 21st century music by simply dressing it with skittering hi-hats. Nichols’ vision for the blues is of a form of music that’s intimately tied to everyday life in 2023, something that’s reflected not only in the choice of instrumentation, but in the complexities of the songwriting and the gray areas his lyrics explore. This is music that comes straight from the present, and as such, it’s a reminder that the same shit that drove the first blues singers to pick up a guitar is still present behind the throbs of deep bass hits today. The Fatalist sounds unlike any blues record you’re likely to hear in 2023.

Of course, Nichols’ songwriting has always been firmly rooted in the present. He proved he could succeed on the music industry’s own blues terms on his self-titled 2021 debut, whose songs, Bandcamp Daily said, “seem to flow from some great repository of emotion and insight.” The Fatalist finds him digging deeper in search of answers to ever-more-complicated questions around responsibility and self-definition, his plainspoken lyrics both cutting and refreshing in their sincerity and refusal to accept pat solutions. Over a guitar line that blisters and pops with bright sunshine, he holds forth on the simple everyday power of love in “Love is All,” and when he shades his optimism with a clear-eyed view of “bad behavior in the canon of good men,” as he sings, his guitar line goes cloudy with the thought. He slowly walks around a broken relationship in “The Difference,” trying to find the faults. It’s a decidedly modern breakup song, one steeped in moral ambiguity. “I just don’t know the difference between love and sympathy,” he sings, before hoping his once-beloved “won’t forget the one who kept your ego fed.”