February Actuary

‘February Actuary’ arrives right after the album’s strongest moment, ‘January Kiss,’ and it has the good sense not to try to top it. Instead it shifts the mood cleanly: where ‘January Kiss’ runs tender, this one pushes uplifting, and the quicker pulse keeps the energy from sagging in the early going. The blues-infused guitar work is the main event, loose enough to feel spontaneous but precise enough to hold through eight sections without wandering. It has that quality you get from early Stevie Ray Vaughan instrumentals, where the technique is obvious but the feel is what you actually remember. After this, ‘Ides of March’ slows things further and deepens the uplifting register, so ‘February Actuary’ functions as the bridge between the album’s opening energy and its first real deceleration. It handles that job well, and the locked-in rhythm section gives it a center of gravity that stands on its own terms too.