Nick Pagliari

A tough little roots-pop record from Memphis native Nick Pagliari. Upping the ante from his 2007 EP (the title track of which was featured in the film "P.S. I Love You"), Pagliari has added horns and, in general, delved deeper into the soul of pop music. The opener, "Leave it Alone," which deals with the expectations one encounters when moving back home, may very well be biographical as Pagliari recently returned to Memphis after five years in Nashville. Thankfully, he didn't lose his soul to Music City. "Please and Thank You" is filled with understated and soulful tunes that won't bowl you over with power or wisdom - but will draw you in with each listen. "Don't Wanna Die Lonely" is both tuneful and catchy, thanks to a rich, Wurlitzer-sounding keyboard and melody lines. "The Union Infantry" mixes a Band/Levon Helm groove with lazy Salvation Army horn parts, recalling "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" and name-checking maverick Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest (who, outnumbered two-to-one, routed Union forces at the Battle of Brice's Crossroads). Go figure. While he doesn't offer up a lot of variety, Pagliari has hit on an engaging style that just might get him someplace. - Michael Lipton, Charleston Gazette - Charleston, WV - 8/21/08

A story teller with the full range of Tennessee music in his palette, Pagliari is coming up the hard way in these new times but fighting the good fight by getting recognition in high profile soundtracks. With that special melding of acoustic guitar and Memphis soul at it’s core, he has a knack for alt.adult under his belt and will connect big with his audience once we figure out who is going to pick up the slack for Starbucks deceased music enterprise. A smart comer with a lot on the ball, Pagliari is proof there’s still plenty of good music out there no matter how the naysayers bray. (Palagreeno Records) - Chris Spector, Midwest Record - Chicago, IL - 8/9/08

This is Nick Pagliari's second full length disc and it is a solid effort with a fully fleshed out sound, recorded in Memphis with a full band. Pagliari is a storyteller who has taken his stories and put them into songs. He is from Memphis, that junction North and South collides, where so many influences get jumbled into the pot and mixed together until they blend into a thick stew. The Memphis R & B sound is replete with horns mixing with the story telling of the writers such as Ferrol Sams and E.B. White and smashing into the blues from down in the delta, and as distilled by folks such as Jim Dickinson all mixed with water from the tributaries of the Mississippi River, until it forms a wonderfully seasoned mixture. You can hear people such as Guy Clark, all the way up from his Texas stomping grounds, merging with Sun Records, and mixing with that most American sounding of bands, The Band.

Pagliari is a man with a task and that is to spread the snapshots of life he has frozen with his story telling into the musical consciousness of the airways that beam into our lives. His unique perspective gives us alternative ways of looking at situations that arise in all lives, particularly those that are lived consciously and thoughtfully. He wrote all nine of the tunes and it should be interesting to see where he goes from here. One real standout track is, Highway Stays The Same. - Bob Gottlieb, Folk and Acoustic Music Exchange

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

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 - Performing Songwriter Magazine

7. Nick Pagliari, The Sail (Madjack): Pagliari has the sort of fine-tuned pop sensibility that makes him impervious to musical trends. It is a quality that makes him probably the surest bet here for commercial success. Just recently he scored a song on the soundtrack to the Hilary Swank film "P.S. I Love You." But his best work so far is still his full-length early debut on the Madjack label, an effort where the hooks have an undercurrent of melancholy that adds depth to his work. - The Commercial Appeal by Mark Jordan