Darren Watson became a conduit of John Hiatt’s home-rooted frustration in his cover of ‘Damn This Town’

Darren Watson sings Damn This Town as though John Hiatt’s pain has taken up residence in his ribcage, stirring itself awake each time he opens his throat. The single becomes one of the most affecting moments on his cover LP, which pulls you straight into a world shaped by sparse instrumentation that paints shadows across the skyline of the single. It feels less like a studio production and more like a temporal gateway into the home roots of misery, the kind that settles in the marrow. His vocals remind us what it means to howl the blues with no restraint, as though the only way to soothe the sting is to let it bleed out in song. Every twang of the string, every steady echo of percussion, becomes another intravenous shot of barbed emotion into the soul, deepening the ache as the track folds into a pensive heaviness that never tips into theatrics. Alongside the clear reverence Watson carries for the blues, the cover amplifies the emotional weight of the original by quietly affirming that people have been disillusioned by the local expanse of reality for generations, leaving their angst stamped into the dirt. That depth is unsurprising from a […] The post Darren Watson became a conduit of John Hiatt’s home-rooted frustration in his cover of ‘Damn This Town’ appeared first on A&R Factory.

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Darren Watson sings Damn This Town as though John Hiatt’s pain has taken up residence in his ribcage, stirring itself awake each time he opens his throat. The single becomes one of the most affecting moments on his cover LP, which pulls you straight into a world shaped by sparse instrumentation that paints shadows across the skyline of the single. It feels less like a studio production and more like a temporal gateway into the home roots of misery, the kind that settles in the marrow. His vocals remind us what it means to howl the blues with no restraint, as though the only way to soothe the sting is to let it bleed out in song. Every twang of the string, every steady echo of percussion, becomes another intravenous shot of barbed emotion into the soul, deepening the ache as the track folds into a pensive heaviness that never tips into theatrics. Alongside the clear reverence Watson carries for the blues, the cover amplifies the emotional weight of the original by quietly affirming that people have been disillusioned by the local expanse of reality for generations, leaving their angst stamped into the dirt. That depth is unsurprising from a […]

The post Darren Watson became a conduit of John Hiatt’s home-rooted frustration in his cover of ‘Damn This Town’ appeared first on A&R Factory.