Nick Pagliari’s got the twang of Nashville in his voice and the spirit of Memphis in his soul. It’s a combination that makes his songs indelible snapshots of life — ringing portraits of love, ambition, dreams, connections, and the rest of what matters.
On his second full-length album, Please and Thank You, Pagliari broadens his musical reach while displaying the storytelling prowess and the warm, personable vocal style that’s always been at the heart of this young singer-songwriter’s art. It’s the first full distillation of all of his influences. Songs like “Leave It Alone” and “Highway Stays the Same” balance the hook-powered melodicism of ’80s rock with the groove driven legacy of his native Memphis and the alt-country sound minted by groups like Uncle Tupelo, Wilco, Son Volt and the Old 97’s. The sound of the Civil War tale “The Union Infantry” reaches back even further, to the heyday of The Band.
Please and Thank You follows 2007’s EP Safe and Sound, whose title track was featured in the Hilary Swank movie P.S. I Love You, and that same year’s The Sail album.
“This is a people album,” Pagliari explains. “It’s about my life, the lives of my friends and the characters I’ve developed to tell different stories about struggle and romance and desire and change.”
PLEASE AND THANK YOU - REVIEWS:
Recalling the loose rock-twang of Son Volt and straightforward lyrical instincts of a storyteller, Nick Pagliari offers an album full of great road-trip music. His guitar-based tunes transport the listener to his world through honest narratives, even referencing the high-school friends who still hang out at the bowling lanes (“Leave It Alone”). Pagliari paints vivid character sketches, like the Everyman/closet guitar hero in “Play That Rock N’ Roll Loud.” Even on the breakup songs and tunes about whiskey, pills and cocaine, these nine tracks don’t pull the listener too far to the bottom. Maybe that’s because the arrangements are so much fun. Pagliari’s lyrics feel lived in, as if the listener is sitting with him at his favorite hometown watering hole. This Thank You is certainly in order. —LCB, Performing Songwriter Magazine
The second full-length disc from Memphis native, former Nashville resident, and current South Carolinian Nick Pagliari finds him at a stylistic crossroads between tightly orchestrated pop and a more relaxed alt-country sound. Recorded in Memphis, the album makes it obvious that he has soaked up more than a little of that town’s legacy of horn-inflected rock and soul.
Pagliari goes disarmingly retro on the opening track "Leave It Alone", which sounds like a lost Billy Joel single, all rhythmic piano and big fat horn section fills, and also on "Don't Wanna Die Lonely", which employs one of those riffs so familiar you just know you've heard it before somewhere, on an NRBQ or Big Star album. What you’ve almost certainly heard before is the sound Pagliari delivers on "Do What You Love", where he's almost a dead ringer for Jay Farrar; the phrasing, tonality and vocal mannerisms so closely mirror the Uncle Tupelo and Son Volt singer that it would be offputting if the song weren't so dead-on gorgeous.
With one foot in Memphis' legacy of rock and soul, another in Nashville's less-traveled musical avenues, and a new foothold in the southeast, Pagliari has delivered an impressive album of polite power-pop with its influences displayed plainly but purposefully. -Kevin Oliver, No Depression
This modern singer/songwriter combines pop attitude with the right amount of sensitivity to create an arresting musical amalgam. At times he sounds like a young Nick Lowe, others like Peter Case during his rocker phase. Regardless of which he may allude to, Pagliari creates unique and instantly affecting music. -SS, Vintage Guitar Magazine
