In Jericho, Kyle Davis doesn’t just sing, he bleeds, reflects, and rebuilds. Marking his first full-length album since 2020’s Make It Count, this nine-track release is Davis at his most personal, most exposed, and most evolved. At once a diary and a meditation, Jericho is less a collection of songs and more a testimony to what it means to lose, to grieve, and against all odds, to try again.
From the moment Jericho opens with “The Last Line,” listeners are pulled into an emotive tide of acoustic rock and Americana folk, anchored by Davis’s distinctively warm vocals and lyrical candor. “No one ever said this would be easy,” he admits an early, unvarnished thesis for the entire record. And yet, amidst the ache, there’s fire: the quiet resolve to stand back up.
Throughout the album, Davis weaves the intimate storytelling reminiscent of Jackson Browne with the soulful gravity of Peter Gabriel and the steady groove of Bill Withers. It’s a sound steeped in classic singer-songwriter tradition, yet unafraid to wander new terrain, both musically and emotionally. With longtime producer Don Dixon at the helm and a seasoned ensemble including Peter Holsapple and Rob Ladd, Jericho is as sonically rich as it is spiritually grounded.
The hauntingly poetic “On a Ledge” stands out as the album’s emotional core. Over gently layered piano and flickering percussion, Davis captures that liminal space between breakdown and breakthrough. “Maybe the laughter will return again in time,” he muses, his voice hovering between hope and despair. It’s the kind of song that interrupts your breath, a rare thing in today’s crowded musical landscape.
Then there’s “Sail Away,” a whispered exhale that likens emotional surrender to water slipping through your fingers. With restrained instrumentation and an almost spiritual hush, the track urges listeners to stop resisting the tides of change. “Passengers,” the closing track, offers quiet closure. It’s a song about the winding, often confusing roads of adulthood, where we get lost and find our way only by walking together.
At the center of it all is the title track, “Jericho,” a symbolic and sonic reckoning. Named after the biblical city whose walls fell from the power of sound, Davis turns that imagery inward. Here, the walls are emotional: grief, shame, guilt and the act of singing them down is both catharsis and confrontation. “Not all of them fit together the same way anymore,” Davis confesses of the shattered pieces of self, “but enough do.” It’s a mantra not of perfection, but of resilience.
As much as Jericho is about sorrow and survival, it’s also about artistic clarity. Davis, now in the seasoned stretch of his career, no longer sings to impress. He sings to connect, to confess, to heal. After time away from the spotlight raising a family, he returns not just older, but wiser, with a voice weathered by experience and a pen sharpened by vulnerability.
Yes, Jericho is beautiful. But more than that, it’s brave.
For those who’ve struggled to piece themselves back together, who’ve stood in the rubble of what once was and asked, “Now what?” Kyle Davis has an answer. Or maybe not an answer, but a companion. A voice to remind you: the broken pieces might not all fit, but enough do..
