In 2018, the late David Berman, legendary singer-songwriter, poet, and frontman of the still-underappreciated Silver Jews, declared that Ryan Davis was "the best lyricist who's not a rapper going.” It was high praise, and was largely based on Davis's work with his former band State Champion, which disbanded that same year. Now, seven years later, listening to New Threats from the Soul, the new album from Davis's latest group, Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band, I can only imagine what praise Berman would have heaped on it; the lyrics are darkly comic, dizzyingly intricate, and consistently affecting—much like Berman's best work—and made even more enjoyable by the band's stellar arrangements and sharp playing.
I only became familiar with Ryan Davis recently, when I saw him open for MJ Lenderman last fall. As I waded through the crowd towards the stage, all that initially registered was a deep, twangy voice, a set of black aviators, and all the comfortable sonic signifiers of modern alt-country. I settled into the music's warm ambiance, swayed with the crowd, but didn't pay much attention—until I heard the lines: “Her daddy was a hypnotist / her mother was a metronome / her mortal coil is not so much a curse / as it is a stepping stone.”
Who was this guy again? Why haven't I heard of him before? And what business does he have tossing off lines this good?
So I started paying attention—to the show and then to the band's broader output, specifically their last album, Dancing on the Edge, where that line, and many other similarly great ones, all reside. Earlier this year, I was bowled over by "New Threats from the Soul,” the fantastic lead single from the album of the same name, and then was stunned by the album itself, released this past Friday, which contains some of the best songwriting I've heard all year.
It’s hard to think of anyone else in capital-I Indie Rock who is operating at this level in 2025: there's MJ Lenderman's casual profundity, Katie Crutchfield's rugged romanticism, Karly Hartzman's devastating storytelling, Alex G's haunting sketches, Cameron Winter's cathartic balladry—all incredible, don't get me wrong, but nothing quite as virtuosic as what I'm hearing on this album. As an example, look at how Davis blends the imagery of blue collar America with his own moral philosophy: “You can see the kingdom from the tailgate if you stack a couple coolers, but you're never gonna see it from the front of the line.” Or check out one of his sneakily hilarious spins on a country-western trope: “I left my wallet in El Segundo / I left my true love in a West Lafayette escape room.” Or how he encapsulates a life of questionable decisions with a phrase like “a slew of mismeasurements between the place I stand and the place where I will rest.” Across the whole album, the density and consistency of the writing is staggering.
Davis is operating in a familiar lane, picking up the torch from earlier rock-and-roll troubadours like Tom Waits, Jason Molina and the aforementioned David Berman, but there is a freshness and idiosyncrasy to his writing too. I'm thinking of the penny slot machine in “Mutilation Springs” that yells out “What even am I, by god!” towards the high-stakes room in the casino, or the many cheeky turns of phrase that lend the album its lighthearted playfulness (“If you need me, you know where to find me: north of a puddle and west of a hole”). It all makes for a singular record from one of the most exciting voices in indie rock today, and I'm confident New Threats from the Soul will be a major inflection point for Davis's already impressive career.
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