Track listing: Coming Home, Bulletproof, Roses in the Rain, You Ain't the One, Up & Down, The End of Time, Out of Here, Believe, A Life Without Goodbyes, Nothing Can Bring You Down, This Time, Never Going to Walk Away From You, I Remember, Life

What a surprise to come across Coyote Music's second artist hailing from Novi, Michigan! Rob Lalain has just released his follow-up to the February 2023 album Back to the Start. This effort, entitled simply Life, embodies a gritty realism you hear more often in Midwest artists. Maybe it's a blue collar thing, maybe it's the weather. Who knows? But what Life gives you here is straightforward rock 'n' roll. 

From a production standpoint, Lalain phases vocals more often than not, setting a bit of a grooving tone. There's a blend of chunky guitar tones and spacey, almost New Wave sounding reverb-heavy guitar sounds. His snares are fat and tempos come straight at you with a mid-tempo unabashedness. 

I'm coming home, been away too long, I'm comin' home to you.

When the pandemic hit, you had droves of people learning how to bake sourdough or pull off a good tie-dye job on their old t-shirts. For Rob Lalain, though, he revisited writing and recording music. After more than 20 years away from it, he dove headlong right back in. And it seems to have stuck! The first track "Coming Home" conveys an almost triumphant tone, perhaps from his rediscovery of the joy of expression that songwriting creates.

But he didn't stop at songwriting. For the second track on the album, "Bulletproof," Lalain's put together a video--a blend of stock video and studio footage, telling a bit of a visual tale to accompany the lyrical story. 

What's great about Lalain's story is that many of us shelve our artistic side in favor of "getting a day job," paying bills, fighting the daily grind. But he's come back to honor the right side of his brain. And now two albums into it, he's building his musical career where he left off back toward the turn of the century. Discovery more about Rob Lalain, follow him on socials, and stream Life and his other releases, all found at roblalainmusic.com.