Rainy Day Music The Jayhawks

The Jayhawks’ seventh album backs away from their “super-pop” releases like Smile and the underrated Sound of Lies and looks back to their earlier, rootsier sound…

As guitarist and frequent songwriter with the Jayhawks, Gary Louris was on hand from the group's atmospheric country-influenced early recordings to their later grand-scale pop productions, so it shouldn't be much of a surprise that Louris' first solo album should embrace both ends of this musical spectrum. Vagabonds manages to sound grand and organic at once, with the arrangements and production capturing a sense of the wide open spaces of Hollywood Town Hall and Rainy Day Music, especially on the beautifully heart-tugging "She Only Calls Me on Sundays," while also encompassing the more ambitious melodic conceits of Smile and Sound of Lies on tracks like "Black Grass" and "Omaha Nights."