Texas-born Nashville singer-songwriter Hayes Carll cut his ninth album We’re Only Human in Austin with producer and guitarist Gordy Quist, who is a member of long-running Americana group The Band of Heathens. If Carll’s collaboration with the band, 2024’s Hayes & the Heathens, is post-Little Feat rock ’n’ roll, Quist and Carll cast the songs on We’re Only Human in a kind of post-parlor-music mode. The limpid production works perfectly on “Stay Here Awhile,” in which a becalmed Carll compares himself to a bluejay he watches making a nest in his back yard.
The album is full of honest, funny songs that are well-observed. Still, Carll is so crafty a songwriter that he gives himself an exit from the rigorous process of self-examination, and the way out is — no surprise — songwriting itself.
Carll makes hay from the queasy confessional tone he achieves in “I Got Away With It,” an account of various transgressions that comes across as comic, not tragic. “I Got Away With It” and “Progress of Man (Bitcoin & Cattle)” posit Carll as a guy who’s stepped back from the whirlwind of the music business — and maybe all of contemporary life — to take a look at how his thoughts and actions relate to the chaos of the second Trump administration.
We’re Only Human is a sly, humane addition to the canon of Texas-to-Tennessee art song. Find the record at your favorite record store, on your favorite streaming service or via Carll’s website. The songsmith’s next Nashville show is Thursday, Sept. 11, during AmericanaFest; he plays 8 p.m. at 3rd and Lindsley. Until then, keep up with him on Instagram for more.
