The Cairo Gang

Emmett Kelly's run as The Cairo Gang has seen him inhabit mostly noir shades, culminating in the brooding ominousness of 2012's The Corner Man. He broke stride and found his inner Byrds fan on the excellent Tiny Rebels EP from last year, embracing jangle like a second skin. As Goes Missing, opens it seems that perhaps he's retreated back into the shadows, "An Angel, A Wizard" has those old clouds gathering around its edges, but they part soon enough as the album throws itself headlong into a spiral of bittersweet strums and autumnal overtones. Its a true extension of Tiny Rebels' air of sighed relief, and the further the album unfolds the more it shows that Kelly can't be pinned or painted into the genre conventions we're likely to try put on him. He's a songwriter at heart and the ebullient grace of his comfortability with emotion comes beaming through this album. Repeated spins show Goes Missing to be a love letter to 60's folk and the haunted troubadour, but its core is Kelly's voice, a bittersweet knife right to the heart every time. Among an already stellar catalog, this may rank as one of his best.

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