Tom Lillo is a Los Angeles-based musician who has spent the last ten years in the studio, engineering, producing, and playing instruments for a variety of other artists. Those ten years provided a great deal of associations in the business, which Lillo has employed to good advantage on Blue Eyed Mystic. Producer David Miner (Elvis Costello, Pierce Pettis, T-Bone Burnett) plays bass, and sings backup, while Kate Miner, Jude Cole, and Jason Wade (Lifehouse) also make appearances.
The result? A great album by an up-until-now unknown artist. Dealing with themes of love and truth, and struggles of faith, Blue Eyed Mystic resonates with the listener, questioning yet comforting, as Lillo indicates that we are all in the same boat, but that life has its high points as well.
Lillo's influences are evident throughout the album. "I Think It's Love" segues into its chorus with a Beatles riff lifted from "I Wanna Hold Your Hand," an obvious tribute. "Dead Man's Clothes," about a man trying to escape his past, recalls "People Get Ready" with its style and meter, while the vocals are very much like those of T-Bone Burnett. The fact that the songs are registered to Zuma Ridge Music, and the guitar work on "The Man I Thought I Was" both give a nod to Neil Young.
In his press release, Lillo states that he wished for some of the songs to be ambiguous, in that they could be about "a person, or God, or both." He succeeds in "I Found Love":
A hard eyed loner doing things my way
I would not take something if I could not pay
Safely searching behind my walls
Until I heard a rumble and watched them fall
And I found love...
"Jericho" and "Walk on Water" similarly follow this pattern, and could be about a man struggling to find God, or trying to attain a better relationship with their subjects. "Border Town," a David Baerwald-like tune, details the loneliness that can set in as we go through life.
"The Man I Thought I Was" portrays a man struggling with his own ego, realizing that his carefully crafted self-image is not reality:
"Good intentions, but, I still let you down The same excuses that you know so well The days are flying, I thought I'd change the world But I can't even seem to change myself."
Is he speaking to God? To a woman? To himself? Listen to Blue Eyed Mystic and judge for yourself. I can promise you won't regret it.
4 tocks
