Bobby Dove - Fortune Teller

"Am I just a fortune teller, making shit up as I go along?" Bobby Dove asks in the title track and opener of their new album. That inquiry could very well be the summation of being human. There's really no answer to that, but Dove's Fortune Teller works through a series of questions to find the truth, probing deep into existence in a search for finding the meaning, purpose, and drive of life. "I'm not afraid to live, and I'm not afraid to die," they sing.

Dove doubles down on that bold, yet insightful, declaration with songs like "Trans Canadian Blues," in which they muse on what it's like to be trans with a honky-tonk mindset in the face of closing walls. "I'm a lonesome boy on a lonesome road with a heavy heart and a heavy load," they howl over the cry of pedal steel and thrashing guitars, "but that's the life I had to choose, highway bound trans Canadian blues."

The Jim Lauderdale collaboration, "Did I Speak Too Soon," tenderly gallops with the heart of country & western's yesteryear when the likes of Eddy Arnold blasted through the car stereo. Similarly, "Dreamt I Met John Prine" ("Am I running out of time?" Dove pleads) and "Somewhere in the Middle of Nowhere" feel ripped from an era when country music carried significantly more weight. On the latter, Dove even breaks into a yodel, a reprieve we don't hear much of these days.

That craft and love of the past guide Dove's unwavering but delicate hand. "Billie Holiday" is a particularly booming performance, dressed up as a soft confession whispered in your ear. "Billie sits poised in the corner of the stage / I can see her pain-struck beauty in the garland that she wears," they sing with a prickly heaviness. "Have I lived past my coming of age? / Will my face be framed one day for other stragglers who stand here?" They work through their existential crisis through their music. Even as they step onto the stage, throngs of concertgoers erupt in applause and cheers, those questions hang over their head like scattered stars.

Bobby Dove is both profoundly world-weary and electrifying across the album. The quiet, reflective moments ("Not Much of an Outlaw," "Crocodile Road") perch comfortably next to Dove's raucous yee-haws ("Loose Screws"), mirroring the uncertainty and fearlessness nestled in the lyrics. With the funeral march and closer, "SALEM," Dove inhabits a life akin to a witch, tearing themselves away from the only world they've known. "When I get to where I'm goin’, I'm gonna lay right down, cross my palms over my chest and cry out to this town," they sing, later weeping in dark, broken streaks, "My familiar left this world, and I am close behind."

Fortune Teller endures the yearning and desperation of humanity, while also pulling vibrant tarot spreads about life, love, happiness, and tragedy. It's all there; we just have to look (or in this case, listen) a little closer.

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