On The Universal Fire (Fluff and Gravy Records), his first album of original material since 2018’s Blood Brothers, troubadour Jeffrey Foucault traverses the valleys of loss as he takes a spin through a diverse swath of musical territories.

Bleak, droning strings open the album’s first track, “Winter Count,” leading into somber, gospel-inflected piano chords that lay beneath Foucault’s grizzled, yearning vocals, evoking the dreary desolation of the season and irreparable loss. The title track, a Jackson Browne-like propulsive folk rocker with screaming leads on the instrumental bridge, catalogs the loss of the musical past that occurred in the 2008 fire at California’s Universal Studios in which the master recordings—“the iteration of a life”—of many of our iconic musicians such as “Muddy, Lady Day, and Coltrane” were burned. “Solo Modelo” rocks steady along an up tempo Latin rhythm propelled by punchy percussion, while cascading steel guitar notes introduce “Monterey Rain,” mimicking the cheerlessness that often rolls into our lives just as the rain dampens the world around us. “Night Shift,” an ode to life on the road, burns down the roadhouse with its straight-ahead raucous rockabilly. Foucault sings over gently finger-picked guitar on the meditative “East of Sunrise,” a testimony to the brevity of life and love, while the Calypso country folk song “Sometimes Love” testifies to the fleeting joys of love.

The Universal Fire showcases once again Foucault’s lyrical ingenuity and his down-to-the-bone vocals that convey the emotional depth of the human struggle to pull joy out of despair.

(www.folkalley.com)