Album Review- Hayes Carll- We're Only Human

Hayes Carll is on the list of one of my favorite new artists of the (not so) new Century. It was 2016s Joe Henry produced Lovers and Leavers album that I first noticed him. On his early albums, he cowrote songs with Jim Lauderdale, Ray Whylie Hubbard and Guy Clark. Carll has established himself in that lineage. Carll reminds me of a couple of musicians. One is one of my favorites- Steve Earle. Both are cut out of the Townes Van Zandt/Guy Clark cloth. Long time Duke (Earle’s backing band) Bucky Baxter, guitarist Kenny Vaughn who played with Earle on”Some Dreams” (as well as spending time as main guitarist with sometime Earle collaborator Lucinda Williams) and Alison Moorer (who often toured and recorded with Earle for many years as well as being an established artist in her own right, and was married to Earle) make up part of the band on Carll’s 2005 album Little Rock. 

The character in the title track of Carll’s title track of his fourth album KMAG YO-YO is a military serviceman not unlike the kind Earle has sang about, and “Stomp and Holler” from the same kind of ramble and rollick Earle does so effortlessly. Of course, when I first listened to Carll and imagined him as the next great Earle style songwriter, I didn’t know their history was going to intertwine. Earle’s seventh marriage was to Moorer (2005-2015). Carll married Moorer in 2019 and they are still married to this day. In a much publicized interview after the divorce, Earle said that his wife left him for a “younger, skinner less talented songwriter”. 

Carll is a perceptive writer but has a sense of humor too. One of his most famous songs is “Bad Liver and a Broken Heart” (not the Tom Waits song. Though he does cover “I Don’t Wanna Grow Up”). You don’t have to look too hard in his catalog to find songs like “She Left Me for Jesus” and “Jesus and Elvis”, or “Another Like You” a song about a Democrat and a Republican falling in alcohol-induced romance. He reminds me a lot of the recently passed Todd Snider, who also has made a career of switching back and forth from serious country folk to humorous songs. Carll would cover Snider (“Beer Run” “Play A Train Song”) and Snider would cover Carll (“Stomp and Holler”). The two were close friends with Snider acting as a mentor to Carll. Critics say 2025s “We’re Only Human” is a different Carll album than previously. I don’t know that it is drastically different if you really want to compare. It is certainly a bit more mature for sure (and that may be why I connect it to more than any of his previous work) but it’s still him. 

There is definitely a pervasive feeling of 2025 on this album. It is an album for a world where people just don’t get along anymore. There was always a sense of John Prine in his work, but that really feels like the vibe here. Very few songwriters can make sense of it all like the guy who wrote “Sam Stone” and “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You into Heaven Anymore”, but Carll accomplished that here. While it’s not a theme album. There’s enough songs here to bring that topic up. Songs like “Making Amends” and the title track are pretty self explanatory. The best songs are the live-and-let-love “Good People (Thank Me)” and “The Progress of Man” where “we all make big money on Bitcoin and cattle”. There’s a bit of variety in sounds and topics with “High” being a mellow waltz that Snider would have approved of. 

Songs like “One Day” and “Stay Here Awhile” sound like they could be off one of Earle’s late 90s records. Throughout the record, a variety of guests from Americana to pop country offered their assistance in cowriting or instrumentation- Shovels and Rope, Brothers Osbourne, Jared Reynolds (Ben Folds), MC Taylor (Hiss Golden Messenger) Noah Jeffries (Jason Boland and the Stragglers), Gordy Quist (Band of Heathens), Brian Wright, Aaron Raitiere (Lady Gaga, Miranda Lambert) and Ray Wylie Hubbard. I had my eyes on Carll for a long time. There’s a bit of parallel to Lydia Loveless who came out around the same time and has shifted from the bluntness of youth to really developing into an astute storyteller. I would attribute the comparison that both these artists scratch my particular itch (I haven’t seen any other reviewer make this connection and I doubt any will, though of interest, both Loveless and Carll show up to provide guest vocal spots on the Supersuckers’ 2016 album Holdin the Bag). 

“We’re Only Human” is one of the great Americana albums of 2025 and a testament that Carl has delivered on his potential promise all those years ago.