Consumer Guide Album

Fox Green: Light Over Darkness [self-released, 2024]
Easily the best-realized of this likable Little Rock quintet's three biggish-rock albums, smoother and more fetching musically and lyrically, with special kudos for "Sleepy John Estes" ("and my mom"), "6 Days Sober" (only every Saturday the same gal escorts him off the wagon), and "Jones Street Revisited" (which Little Rock or no Little Rock I like to imagine is about the Greenwich Village block where the Freewheelin' Bob Dylan cover was shot and my wife grew up). But the big door prize bears the unlikely title "Jesus Loves Us All," unlikely because that outsized "us" is far more inclusive than we have every right to doubt or fear as the case may be. "Here's to Little Richard," they peal, and in a world where what everyone wants is "some decent healthcare" they mean everything that implies. "One day I'll get back to Jesus," they pledge, and because they're so sure he'll be there for them they very nearly convince me--metaphorically, anyway. A-