Salim Nourallah has figured out how to make a heavy concept album about divorce seem light and simple.
On Sept. 28, the Dallas singer-songwriter and Old 97's producer released Somewhere South of Sane, an intricate 21-song double-album about love, pain and the struggle to piece your life together after your marriage crumbles.
Songs like "Betrayal" are so somber they make Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks sound like "Don't Worry, Be Happy." Yet as a whole, the album has a meditative quality to it. It's the mellowest of Nourallah's seven solo albums, with almost no drums, bass, or traces of rock 'n' roll.
“The world is just so noisy right now with everyone arguing ... I deliberately wanted to make a quiet, introspective record,” says Nourallah, 51, as he relaxes at Pleasantry Lane, his tidy two-room recording studio in a converted garage in Dallas’ Vickery Place neighborhood.
“This record is like sprawling invitation to be quiet and just take it in.”
Nourallah gets expert backing on the album from Nick Earl (Polyphonic Spree), who plays acoustic and electric guitar with a violin bow for an effect that’s sometimes ghostly, sometimes whimsical.
“Nick makes these cinematic worlds for each song to live,” he says. “It's like the musical equivalent of Panavision.”
The album's main instrument is Nourallah's melancholy tenor, which he applies to topics ranging from finding peace in a violent world ("Relief") to finding salvation in music in "Boy in a Record Shop," a song inspired by the singer's memories of buying The Beatles (alias "The White Album") in a K-Mart in El Paso, where he grew up.
Yet the bulk of the songs and the title of Somewhere South of Sane deal with Nourallah's divorce five years ago and his attempts to recover and learn from the experience.
“Throwing yourself fully into love is a bit insane -- just one blow and you can end up on the rocks below,” Nourallah says.
“So you start putting up these walls and carrying around these bags, because you’re terrified, and I realized I’m walking out of my marriage with the biggest bags I’ve ever accumulated. So how do I recognize them? How do I shed them? How do I allow myself to fully love again?” he says. “We’re all works in progress, right?”
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As usual, Nourallah is juggling a half dozen projects, including co-running Palo Santo Records (the label that's releasing Sane) and recording a full-band album with help from Marty Willson-Piper of the Church.
But as busy as he is, Nourallah says his divorce has taught him how to better appreciate his free time and also be a better parent to his 9-year-old daughter Miette and 15-year-old son Gavin, who occasionally record with their dad in the Rubber Band, a family “hobby band.”
He sings about being a father in "I Missed My Own Life," a tune from Sane written while he was still married and struggling to balance life as a dad, husband, breadwinner and successful musician.
“I was so caught up with the constant stress -- the moving and shaking and tap-dancing -- that I felt I was missing my children’s lives and my own life,” he says.
Today, he’s no longer blinded by “Success and what it brings / The trinkets it was offering” as he puts it in “I Missed My Own Life.” Instead, Nourallah thinks back on a list of goals he wrote down on paper as a teenager -- a list his parents found a few years ago and gave to him.
No. 3 on young Salim’s list: “Don’t be famous.”
“I’ve never had a hit or sold a ton of records, but I’ve played all around the world, I’ve made it past 50, and I’m on my seventh record ... I’m really lucky. I’m thrilled,” he says. “Making this record was like therapy for me. I've already gotten what I need out of it. I don’t need to be more popular.”
Plan your life
Salim Nourallah performs with Marty Willson-Piper and Laish on Oct. 11 at Fort Worth Live; Oct. 18 at Patterson Appleton Arts Center in Denton; and Oct. 19-20 at Palo Santo Galactic Headquarters in Dallas. More info at www.salimnourallah.com.
