Some horses were always meant to run wild.
Phil Leavitt and Joie Calio, the multi-instrumentalists behind 7Horse's self-described "postpunk dystopian blues," have been exploring unfenced territory together for 30 years. Kickstarting their partnership as members of dada — the platinum-selling alt-rockers behind '90s hits like "Dizz Knee Land" — they now pack a different punch with 7Horse, blurring the lines between '70s-sized rock & roll, Vegas showbiz glitz, and bluesy grit. It's a sound rooted in groove and Gretsch guitars, rhythm and riffs, desert-rock crunch and cinematic sweep. A sound that nods to the best parts of the past while still pushing forward.
7Horse's fifth album, The Last Resort, offers a snapshot of a boundary-breaking band in evolution. Since launching the band in 2011, Leavitt and Calio have saluted the glory days of American rock & roll both onstage and in the studio. Here, they make room for international flourishes, too. There's the bilingual bounce of "Non Sono Un Ragazzo," which finds drummer/frontman Leavitt recounting the band's introduction to film legend Martin Scorsese (who memorably used 7Horse's career-launching track "Meth Lab Zoso Sticker" in The Wolf of Wall Street) in both English and Italian. There's the Latin beat of "Hey Vámonos!," where flamenco guitars, polyphonic rhythm, and four-on-the-floor stomp all swirl together. At its core, though, The Last Resort charts its own musical geography.
"We love the wide-open expanses in our sound," says Calio, nodding to the atmospheric, lonely-highway ambiance that drifts throughout The Last Resort like desert dust. "It's panoramic.
Our influences are from the 20th century — blues, '60s and '70s rock & roll — and we turn that sound on its head. Right out of the box, we had a sound that was our own, but The Last Resort is the destination we've been headed toward the whole time."
Written and recorded during the pandemic that brought 7Horse's touring schedule to a halt, The Last Resort begins with "Hippies on Acid," a larger-than-life rocker about the madness of the modern age. Songs like "Ain't Sleeping Right" canvas similar thematic territory, with Leavitt and Calio responding to a world filled with social division and disturbing news. Don't mistake The Last Resort for a down-in-the-dumps chronicle of today's zeitgeist, though. Building upon the rhythmic approach they developed over their long partnership the two songwriters choose celebration over sorrow, creating a beat-driven, hook-heavy soundtrack for an era in need for a little levity. The album's title nods to the steadfast drive that's kept 7Horse’s members inspired and invigorated for decades, from dada's golden days of Top 40 radio hits to the musicians' rebirth as blues-rock innovators.
"The last resort is your inner life, your imagination," says Leavitt, who began his career as dada's drummer before transforming himself into 7Horse's sequined-jacket-wearing ringleader and Vegas-worthy showman. "When the outside world shuts down and you can't go anywhere or do anything, your inner world is where you turn. That's the last resort. This album is a response to that closed-up feeling where you can't look outward, so you look inward instead. We all needed to do that during this time."
Turning inward allowed 7Horse to write songs like "Get You There," whose mix of falsetto vocals, western soundscapes, and bass-driven pulse evokes Curtis Mayfield one minute and Fleetwood Mac the next. For every track like "Triumph of Seattle" — a heartland rocker, shot through with ringing electric guitars and crisp cowbell — or the slashing, Stones-worthy "My Brain is Dumb," there's an envelope-pushing song like "Walking Free," which splits the difference between Quentin Tarantino's lonely-highway film scores and Tom Wait's half-sung/halfspoken delivery. It's an open-armed panorama of western sound, and if its diversity makes The Last Resort difficult to categorize, 7Horse's members aren't making any apologies. They've established their own identity and invented their own space. "We began this project knowing we needed to evolve,” Leavitt explains. It took time to figure out our roles and let the concept mature. But we've arrived. We know who we are now, and The Last Resort celebrates that." Leavitt and Calio have established themselves outside of their long-running partnership, too. Leavitt logged several years with the Blue Man Group and worked as a voice-over actor. Calio released multiple solo records. With The Last Resort — whose sonic swirl also features contributions from multi-instrumentalist/producer Brian Whelan, audio engineer Mark Rains, and mixer/producer Dave Way — they join forces once again, mining multiple decades of collaborative chemistry for an album that targets the head, heart, and hips.
