David Ramirez nearly walked away from music two years ago. After six LPs, and following a particularly rough breakup, the songwriter felt he needed to step back from processing his world through his songwriting.
The move was understandable – and maybe even healthy – given the relentlessly raw excavations of the heart that Ramirez unloads in his music. Since 2012’s sophomore breakout Apologies, the artist has been uncompromising in his self-reflection, and often self-critique, as his songs became a canvas for grappling with dark edges and existential questions of how we find and create ourselves.
Even as his music evolved over the next decade, especially on the unexpectedly Eighties-flavored We’re Not Going Anywhere or lush, eclectic broil of 2020’s My Love Is a Hurricane, Ramirez’s croon hung on a tentative nerve. Whether reckoning with his demons or allowing himself to fall in love, the troubadour always carried a weight akin to a dark night of crawling through the soul, grasping for mercy.
The spiritual bent of 2021’s Backslider suggested a reckoning with a different direction, and his 2022 follow-up Rules & Regulations EP delivered a searching and questioning collection of stripped-down musings, wavering between penance and playfulness. While Ramirez’s return doesn’t seem to resolve any of his perennial questions or anxiety, it does reset and approach those inquiries of identity from a new place, one grounded in his very relationship to music.
The album opens with a literal awakening, a warm and warped dreamscape interrupted by a female voice placidly calling, “David, it’s time to get up.” The following dramatic burst of “Waiting on the Dust to Settle” surges with an anthemic determination, even if more as a mantra to remember than a realization: “I’m over the anger, the sadness, all the not so gentle reminders of my nature/ I’m moving forward.”
Moving forward for Ramirez means understanding how he got to where he is now, and it starts for the songwriter with the click of a childhood Walkman. The swooning “The Music Man” introduces the pull of music as a swirling force, the eddy of both agony and ecstasy that Ramirez seems destined to forever swim within.
With Chris Boosahda as co-producer, Ramirez remains provocatively varied in style. Loungey vocals at times sound like Nick Cave fronting My Morning Jacket, while freewheeling romps like “Dirty Martini” or “I Got People” hearken to Harry Nilsson in the tension of their upbeat angst. Strings and synths float through the tunes, contributing a soaring ambition and preserving the dreamlike fugue of Ramirez’s searching vocals, shattered at times by sharp percussion.
The backside of the LP opens still floating between memory and reality with “Deja Voodoo” before rushing into the flailing, failing escapism of “A Bigger World” and “Holiday (Crush).” Ramirez can’t run from himself, and the combination of standout motivator “Nobody Meant to Slow You Down” against the subsequent comedown of “Do Not Disturb Me” puts the dichotomy of his constant inner conflict between determination and doubt into full effect.
The soft piano lead-in and smooth croon of closer “Dreams Come True” leaves the album in that suspension, the refrain of “I like the long shot” lulling behind Ramirez’s fraught recognition that “Dreams come true, but only with you.”
On his right forearm, Ramirez has a tattoo that reads “Good Hard Luck,” and that may be the best understanding of the songwriter’s outlook. It’s a not-so-gentle reminder of the contention at the heart of his work, and while his latest album doesn’t move any closer to reconciling it, he does seem to finally embrace it.
David Ramirez
All the Not So Gentle Reminders (Blue Corn Music)
More Local Platters Worth a Spin
Valley Flower
Valley Flower (self-released)
Quintet’s eponymous debut EP blends Blue Ridge bluegrass with Texas dance hall.
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El Cabron (Break Maiden Records)
Rollicking twang and hard-luck rambles from Beaumont songwriter’s sophomore platter.
Kinky Friedman
Poet of Motel 6 (Hardcharger Records)
Posthumous LP from chief Texas wit offers poignant, reflective farewell.
This article appears in April 4 • 2025.
