(Self-released, CD, digital)
There’s nothing wrong with writing about yourself. So many of the most successful songwriters’ favorite subject is themselves: their loves, their heartbreaks and all the messy details of their lives.
Maybe it’s my own glitch, but I just get a little more gas out of outward-looking songwriting. I want my songwriters to be mirrors. I want a view into the lives of compelling strangers. And I want to be reminded of how simultaneously foreign and familiar those lives can be. A little melody wouldn’t hurt, either.
On these fronts, Burlington singer-songwriter Bo Malcolm definitely delivers. The former middle school teacher’s debut solo record, Life of Passion, presents 10 slices of American lives that aren’t his, from an old vet drinking a Labatt Blue to an emancipated slave training horses after the Civil War. There’s even a track about Elvis’ manager, Col. Tom Parker, perhaps being a murderer.
Malcolm is far from short on ideas. Life of Passion plays like a folk-music version of The Canterbury Tales, lurching from character to character. The conceit would be impressive enough, but Malcolm backs it up with clean, evocative songwriting and the lyrical heft of an academic.
On “Shine On, Jim Key!,” Malcolm begins by shouting out an extinct ungulate called eohippus, the first known breed of horse, then takes listeners to the late 19th century, when the song’s titular stallion performed tricks for crowds across America. Over a chord progression with a whiff of George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord,” Malcolm sings the tale of a horse that was supposedly able to read: “Beautiful Jim Key / Lost to history / Brightest to ever be / Shine on, Jim Key.”
There’s a hint of Father John Misty in Malcolm’s vocal delivery, though he’s free of the sarcasm and biting wit that defines the former’s songwriting. Malcolm’s heart is on his sleeve on these songs, even though he often dwells in the stories of others.
Life of Passion has shades of rock and roll. On “Guardian Angel,” Malcolm opens up his sound to a big, heartland country-rock tone that celebrates the power of music, even when all else fails. “Dirty feet on the cabin floor / Momma was Shawnee, Daddy was poor,” Malcolm croons. “No record player, no radio / We lost the farm, I was glad to go.”
Each lyric is contained within its own universe, a story within a story, like a Russian nesting doll of Americana. Amid the tales of heartbreak and challenges, a theme of dust-covered hope runs throughout the record, a sense of broken people rallying and picking themselves up that gives the music an undercurrent of optimism. Malcolm suffuses his songwriting with authenticity and the inherent confidence of a storyteller in his element.
Give Life of Passion a listen at bo-malcolm.com.
This article appears in The Cartoon Issue • 2026.
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