The Last Tycoon - Death By Dixie

High-powered sour mash and gin-soaked cotton warm the veins of The Last Tycoon’s Death By Dixie. The five-song EP, produced by Jim White and Michael Rinne, was released by Silent Kino Records on May 19, debuting a new chapter not only in John Gladwin’s performance, but also in his articulate songwriting.

Death by Dixie is a culmination of half-naked, starving truths that slather themselves in red clay and wallow within the shrink-wrapped skyline of Nashville production. Gladwin is wearing more than his heart on his sleeve; he is presenting filleted pieces of a brass tongue as provisions to the zeitgeist of the gallows last meal. In his bio, he expresses, “I want to sing about the South I actually live in — a place that is both progressing to new heights and struggling to shake off its complicated past.” As the record moves from track to track, Gladwin manages to conjure a stark, sepia-toned soundscape of the confusion and frustration that can be found in every broken backbone from the rise and fall of the plantation mongers to the black-coated lungs of the coal miner left in the mass graves of industrial caves.

The title track is a poignant reflection of the bloody Southern rite of passage, marking the milestones of success and defeat that very much plague the region today. The song contains the outspoken murmurs of a jangling mandolin dripping melodically between the cracks of caustic acoustics. Then, through the combustion of it’s chordal progression and thoughtful arrangement, the track exposes pedal steel lines wavering like the desert heat as it ascends to distortion over the Route 66 blacktop. Gladwin is a kind gunner whose aim isn’t to shoot to kill. Yet, “Death by Dixie” slugs hollow-point rounds into the moral dilemmas of the progressive South with carefully constructed visions that leap from his lyrics like deer in North Georgian headlights.

From there Gladwin ignites the torch of a new testament to the heavy-handed hammer pressed against the anvil of modern angst. “Jesus Christ, Union Man” is a steel-driving anthem that includes railroad-spiked percussion meant to shake the very foundation of the corporate empire whose construction was propelled without regard for the innocent brick, bone and blood of those weaker souls who carried it to power. The track inspires the aimless, sleep-deprived observer to rise and take action with every guttural punch of harmonica, which permeates its unhinged edges. It’s a song that proudly wears the badge of sun-blistered lips pressed hard against buckshot riffs that drag the listener across the sands of an Italian spaghetti western and buries them within the twisted vocal harmonies of a cactus-lined casket.

Salivating multiple listens, Death by Dixie is evidence that we are no more than canaries in the coal mine lulled to an uneasy resting place in the wake of Gladwin’s true blue croon as he grasps at the few chords left of the disenchanted American heart.

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