There’s always been a darkness hanging over Billy Strings, something he’s been processing through his music since his 2017 debut, Turmoil & Tinfoil. Strings has never hid his rough upbringing in Michigan, his family’s struggles with addiction or his own drug use. But he’s rarely been as open and direct as he is on his fifth solo record, So Much for Goodbyes, the guitarist’s first since his mother died of a drug overdose last year.
Debra Apostol’s passing looms over the 16-song set. The cover art is a mixed media piece she was working on the day she died. And you can hear him working through his grief in real-time on the plaintive ballad “Still I Crash:” “Mother, can you still hear mе?” he pleads. “Wishing you were still near mе/ Hoping that this won’t really be the end.” Even the upbeat bluegrass number “Remember to Cry” is clouded by her loss: “If I would have known you’d leave me all alone,” he sings, “I would have remembered to cry.” He contemplates his own death and, perhaps, an end to generational trauma on the banjo- and fiddle-driven “Lay Me Down”: “Lay me down on the hillside,” he demands. “Lay me down and walk away/ Leave no roses on my headstone.”
Co-produced by Strings and Americana legend T Bone Burnett, So Much for Goodbyes is his most polished record to date and his most scattershot. Clocking in at 75 minutes, it’s a lot to take in but it’s full of gems that showcase his strength as a songwriter. The country-leaning “Mill Town Flood,” featuring backing vocals from Lindsay Lou, is up there with Strings’ best work. The same goes for “Live to Tell,” a jazzy country song with Alison Krauss that offers one of the record’s few bits of studio improv. Strings briefly loosens up for the silly “I Like Train Songs,” but it all comes back to his mom. The album ends with “Debra’s Waltz,” a gorgeous instrumental elegy to the woman he never got to say goodbye to.
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