If 2024 LP Rio Bravo breathed heavy with an almost existential wail, Scott Ballew’s fourth LP cracks with cathartic relief. Paradiso bakes in a late-night revel, soaking in the aura of its New Orleans recording as the songwriter stumbles through the streets – and possible loves. “Don’t close your eyes, you’ll hear what you might miss,” Ballew warns on opener “San Sebastian,” sounding like a mix of Damien Jurado and Deer Tick as he surveys the world, wide-but-blurry- eyed. Paradiso hangs intentionally loose, an afterparty seance of celebrating and commiserating voices that come and go. The Deslondes’ Sam Doores and Twain’s Mat Davidson, respectively, chip in on the opposing “Missed Connections” and “Easy and Free,” with the drunken lope of the former countering the sloshing sad piano of the latter’s Tom Waitsian balladry. Likewise, the fiddle scraping against the electric guitar and piano of “HARMONY” careens a rollicking release into the wandering, dreamy “Hey Baby” and character collage “If I Feel This Way Tomorrow,” while the waving harmonica of “One Trick Pony” casts an almost early Jimmy Buffett haze. But closing with “Easy and Free” and sweeping epic “The Last Viking in Sweden” lands Paradiso on a downbeat, the hangover both longing for and cringing at the morning light.
This article appears in January 2 • 2026.