HoboEye Music:
Gina Villalobos, Los Angeles, California

Even if things had been different, Gina Villalobos would have changed the world.

If she had been raised in a bland suburb or a mansion or a shack, if she hadn’t undergone that accident that left her blind in one eye and feeling desperately alone, even if she’d never written a song but had instead expressed herself through photography or one of the other media that occupied her time until music demanded her attention. It wouldn’t have mattered: One way or another, she would have left her mark.

But things did work out the way they were supposed to. A childhood passed among artists, a traumatic injury and its long aftermath, a long run as leader of various bands that led her to set out eventually on her own: All of it leads us to Miles Away, an album of shattering and unforgettable intensity.

For those who have yet to experience Villalobos, it is enlightening to consider her in the company of Neil Young, Ryan Adams, Lucinda Williams’ people so ill-fitted to categories that they had to carve out spaces of their own. That’s not a bad shorthand description of genius, or something close to it; it pretty much sums up Villalobos and her ascension too.

But such comparisons are also misleading, because individualism is as essential as talent for admission to this group. Despite certain similarities to their work, Villalobos sounds like none of the above. Her voice is dreamy at times but often ragged from baring shards of her soul to audiences night after night, on countless stages around much of the world. Her songs are in some ways simple, with tough and tender melodies and lyrics that imply more than they spell out.

Listeners have taken notice, not just back home in California but on clubs throughout the U.S., U.K., and Europe, and far off in Australia and New Zealand. They rallied to her previous release, Rock ‘n Roll Pony, lauding its electricity and honesty (Acoustic Guitar), its abundant lyric and musical hooks full of heart and hard knocks (No Depression), delivered with unquestionably the finest voice in the country-rock genre today (PopMatters).

That was a couple of years ago. On Miles Away Villalobos takes us deeper into darkness, where all she can ask of God is to leave me some drugs and a place to die (Somewhere to Lay Down). She exposes a kind of loneliness that ovations and rave reviews cannot dissolve (Miles Away) and puts us by her side as she stares at her half a face for reason to move toward another day (Don’t Let Go).

It might be almost too much to bear if it weren’t for the power of her music. Even when it seems that she’s scraped her voice raw, Villalobos coaxes something gentle from its ravaged heart (Hard Enough) or rockets toward unexpected peaks of pitch and power (Don’t Defeat Me). And all at once it seems that any heartache can be borne, if only it can be set to a song.

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