Todd Mack’s return with I’m Gonna Love You No Matter What after fourteen years arrives not with noise but with a quiet, steady force, the kind that slips into your chest before you even realize something inside you has shifted. His new album moves like a long conversation with the self, one that wanders through memory, grief, tenderness, and the fragile insistence to keep going. There’s a sense that Mack is not trying to reclaim an old version of himself; he’s searching through the echoes of what has been lived, what has been lost, and what still refuses to dim.
The opening track, “Angel Above,” steps forward gently, carrying a grief that breathes instead of breaks. It feels like waking up early on a quiet morning, replaying the shape of someone who is no longer here. The arrangement is soft, almost weightless, and Mack’s voice holds the ache with a kind of reverence, turning loss into a warm presence rather than an empty space. The mood shifts as “On a Line” moves into darker territory, threading through confusion, societal noise, and the strange contradictions of modern life. Mack sings here as if he’s confiding in the listener, offering observations that sit somewhere between resignation and clarity, all carried by a steady, determined musical undercurrent.
Then the horizon brightens. “Dreams” opens like sunlight through a window, its hopeful guitar lines reminding the listener of the small, steady courage it takes to keep reaching for the things that feel just out of sight. It’s not idealistic: it’s tender, grounded, and honest in its optimism. “No More,” with Sadie Jasper, pulls the story into a fragile duet where two voices try to speak across a distance that words can’t quite close. Their harmonies drift around a shared ache, and the bare arrangement makes each breath and hesitation feel painfully real. The heartbreak deepens with “Ain’t Enough,” where the piano becomes a space large enough to hold the truth that love, no matter how sincere, sometimes can’t bridge the divide. The song feels like a room filled with unspoken things: quiet, intimate, and devastating in its simplicity and bare truth.
“River Carry Me” brings a different kind of sorrow, one shaped by memory and disaster, its story flowing over images of rising water, vanished homes, and the strange resilience that follows devastation. The fiddle and guitar move like currents, carrying the emotional weight without drowning it. That heaviness is then cut by the sharp, searching energy of “The Light Within,” a track that feels like a confrontation with something divine or unseen. The drums strike with urgency, while shimmering textures lift the melody upward, creating a dialogue between doubt and hope. “Undone” arrives with rougher edges: guitars snarling, drums pushing forward, as Mack wrestles with the frayed seams of a world that keeps shifting faster than people can heal. The final solo bursts like a release of everything unspoken, giving the song the catharsis it’s been holding back.
The fire continues with “Reckless,” where grit and vulnerability intertwine. Beneath the swagger, the distortion, and the emotional flare, there’s a deeper longing for accountability, for redemption, for a way to stop breaking the things we care about. It’s bold, bruised, and deeply human. After all the intensity, “If I” drifts in like a quiet confession made without words. Mostly instrumental, it feels like a private moment suspended in time, a meditation that carries truths too delicate to say aloud. The album closes not with a dramatic flourish but with the warm, luminous softness of “You Are There,” a song that hums with remembrance and gratitude. Its melody glows gently, honoring loss without sinking into it, and leaves the listener with the sense that presence can outlive absence in ways we don’t always understand.
Taken as a whole, I’m Gonna Love You No Matter What feels like a journey through memory and meaning; through the places where the past presses against the present and where the future hums with possibilities still undefined. Todd Mack returns not as someone trying to repeat what once was, but as someone who has learned to stand inside the space between now, then, and what could have been, and to let the music reflect every fragile, luminous part of it..
