Written by: Alex Green

Kail Baxley sounds like Van Morrison if he had grown up in South Carolina and was weaned on Larry Brown’s Big Bad Love.

In many ways A Light That Never Dies is Baxley’s Astral Weeks, but shot thick with the swampy fever of the South and embroidered with the soulful lamentations that can only come from the heartsick, the lovelorn, the lonely and the lost.

Baxley’s voice is a stirring thing–it’s something you’ve known but never heard, something you’ve needed but never been able to find–and it gently stretches its wingsapan through numbers like the utterly rousing title track or the heaving mercy of “Tell The Falling Sun” with a rare and soulful grace.

Produced by Eric Corne and Baxley himself, A Light That Never Dies is an instant classic–it finds that rare groove that pivots from Sam Cooke to Amy Winehouse and back again. There are touches of the blues, hints of ska and calypso and miles and miles of soul.

There’s the finger-snapping blues of “Mr. Downtown,” while “Morning Light” sounds like summer in reverse, memory going backwards, and time freezing into a still life.

Elsewhere, “The Ballad Of Johnny” is a ghostly shuffle, “Owe” is a spare lamentation, and the album-closing “Mirrors Of Paradise” is a ray of hope sailing over the river of the damned.

Or the other way around.

Either way, it’s so beautiful the damned and the hopeful could be mistaken for each other, so it really doesn’t matter what side you’re on.

Astonishing work.