Album Review: Willi Carlisle - Winged Victory

A smaller followup from his momentous previous album, yet the captivating songwriting and compositions still persist in compact scopes. ‘Winged Victory’ balances out Willi Carlisle’s sense of empathy and hilarity throughout a lively set of covers and original songs.

Even within a much smaller scope, Willi Carlisle’s sense of empathy and whimsy is still a cut above in today’s field of folk, americana, and country music. ‘Winged Victory’ is so much a two-sided coin: one that shows Willi Carlisle’s wholehearted empathy towards labor struggles in a hostile world, and the unabashed queer side where the absurd hilarity swings with gut-busting laughter. It might not exactly have the cutting insight that rendered so much strong emotion on his last album, but Willie Carlisle’s embrace of communal spirit still allows those two sides to stick the landing.

This two-sided aspect also applies within the musical component of the album, balancing out the original cuts with the covers that clearly have impacted Willi Carlisle as a songwriter and a musician, applying his expressive voice to the stories that he and other people have written. Connecting them all through a variety of traditional folk, americana, bluegrass, and polka that has the warmth and the cheery flair that comes from Willi Carlisle himself. The jaunty polka accents of ‘Crying These Cocksucking Tears’ and the acoustic sweeps of ‘Beeswing’ makes for really great covers, the twangy strums of ‘Work is Work’ and ‘Winged Victory’ provide freewheeling melodic shuffles that invites Carlisle’s voice in the center, ‘The Cottonwood Tree’ and ‘Wildflowers Growin’’ shows his earnest emotion at its clearest, and ‘Big Butt Billy’ may as well be the most ridiculous queer song that he has made - there’s no one else writing about complimenting a non-binary’s big ass with shameless confidence like him.

‘Winged Victory’ may be a smaller follow-up after what he has imparted on ‘Critterland’, but the crop of songs still carries the familiar, tender spirit that Willi Carlisle has always shown before, where his empathetic nature always speak for the people in the queer and labor communities out there, those that have always been pushed aside for so many years. Just more situated within original cuts and covers that have some of his free-wheeling, jauntiest compositions and genre explorations to date. Winged Victories don’t always have to leap, sometimes, they just have to constantly gallop in small, but meaningful distances.

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Favorite Tracks: ‘Wildflowers Growin’’, ‘Winged Victory’, ‘The Cottonwood Tree’, ‘Cryin’ These Cocksucking Tears’, ‘Work is Work’, ‘Beeswing’, ‘Big Butt Billy’

Least Favorite Track: ‘The Cottonwood Polka’