Joe Ely - "For Your Love"

 

Listen here.

Where Nashville has so often been buttoned-up and self-censored, Texas country is sexual; it resides in the throat and in the pelvis. There are few Texan mavericks as self-consciously erotic as Joe Ely, and even into his silver-haired years, the black-clad flatlander’s outlaw transmissions remain provocatively passionate. This new recording of 1988's "For Your Love," originally released on 1988's Dig All Night, channels the love-on-the-run and heart-on-your-sleeve abandon of Ely staples like “All Just To Get To You” and “Settle For Love,” expressing the reckless vulnerability of a love so powerful it makes you lasso the moon and howl at it too before you even realize what you’re doing. I’ve felt that kind of love before, the kind that makes you “stop a freight train single-handed” and part the tides of oceans you never thought you could chart; I may or may not have painted it on the Brooklyn Bridge before you even noticed. All I will say about the manic intensity of true love is this: I agree with Mr. Ely. Your love isn’t just the cover. It’s the whole soul of Proselyte Magazine.