Consumer Guide Album

The Delines: Mr. Luck and Ms. Doom [El Cortez, 2025]
In this extraordinary partnership, the endlessly subtle and succinct Willy Vlautin concocts or in a few cases mayhap relates 13 down-and-out Americana tales that the endlessly calm and unassuminglygraceful Amy Boone brings to life without dramatizing much less overdramatizing them. All but a few are mini-tragedies in which a limited but plausibly functional sexual partnership, initially sometimes a youngish one, is propped up by a workable job or hustle until the deal falls apart for one reason or another, health setbacks included. There are many different ways such a pattern can assert itself, all of them both different and painful. The execution is so flawless that its aesthetic achievement is actively pleasurable. But that doesn't mean you'll ever put it on for the fun of it. A