Not An Airplane
“It’s easy to fall in love,” but is anything else easy?
Nick Shattell doesn’t think so. The paranoid, beautiful, rambling sprawl of It Could Just Be This Place rushes its way through decades of country music, detailing every hardship and heartbreak Americana loves to soundtrack. Yeah, falling in love is a piece of cake, but late night conversations with an obstinate god, growing old and getting your heart chipped away by the weight of the world, not so much. So what else could we do but dive in? Listen to our interview, read our thoughts on It Could Just Be This Place and hear why it’s the best of the 10s.
“Can you ever break up with God? It feels more like denying the existence of something, which I know some of my exes are capable of, but I am not so sure they are right considering I still exist.”
One of the proggiest and most ambitious records of any genre this decade, It Could Just Be This Place is split between two mammoth tracks that bounce wildly from passage to passage. The lyrics and voices are shuddering. Maybe it’s one character, maybe a multitude of Nick Shattells arguing with each other, the scenes and costumes are tear down and tear offs. Shattell crows his way through the eyes of withering vaqueros, newly minted atheists and country monks searching for impossible answers. And the music matches, flowing through bluegrass, pastoral folk and train whistle harmonies. Ken Burns would need at least another special just to get through the knotty world of It Could Just Be This Place.
By the close of the album, Shattell has taken a hatchet to his soul, carving out something new. Whether that’s good or bad, he doesn’t give any answers, nor does the mysterious figure lurking at the edges of his lyrics. When an old man with eyes clear as blue sky joins him in the final coda, he gives a simple shrug to the babbling questions that formed It Could Just Be This Place. But if any album this decade exemplified journey over conclusion, it was It Could Just Be This Place.