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The Horses And the Hounds, 2021
Written by James McMurtry
McMurtry, son of the fabled novelist Larry McMurtry, is a master songwriter with his father's gift for vivid description and pathos. Here, he approaches aging with wry acceptance and dry humor. The narrator is a man who's lived hard and now faces his own decline: “I burned a lot of bridges and I dropped a lot of balls / It’s a wonder I can ever go back to any place I've been," he sings in a craggy deadpan. "Now it’s all I can do just to get out of bed / There's more in the mirror than there is up ahead." McMurtry's voice is limited in range, but he's cultivated a barbed deadpan delivery that cuts straight through the sentimentality other writers might lean on. But it's not just in voice that he's similar to Bob Dylan, but his writing chops. In this song, the keen observations, alternately droll and poignant, just flow on, one after the other.
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