Luke Bell has a classic, brassy country voice that conjures images of both dimples and tears in a beer. His songs exist somewhere in the same arena, because just as easy as it to be charmed by Bell's clever turns of phrase, he'll hit you upside the head. "Sometimes" does that when he sings, "We drank like fish and loved like hogs" one moment, but stares into a clear-eyed abyss of heartbreak the next: "There's a sweet memory at the bottom of my glass."
In a hazy, VHS-quality video for the Bakersfield-style honky-tonk song "Sometimes," Bell and his pals drink, smoke, play cards and sing country karaoke in a bar. In an email, Bell writes NPR that they're all Nashville friends and musicians and whatnot — Erin Rae, Kristina Murray and Patrick Sweany among them — just having a hell of a time:
I had my friend Josh Shoemaker shoot "Sometimes" at our favorite bar with all our friends in Nashville. We just captured folks havin' some genuine fun and goofin' off. The song is about heartbreak, and I think laughing with good friends is the best cure I know of for that.
Luke Bell comes out June 17 on Bill Hill Records, distributed by Thirty Tigers.
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