Tyler Childers - Can I Take My Hounds To Heaven?

Tyler Childers needed something to keep him sane as the pandemic rolled on. So instead of making his fifth album once, he made it three times. Announced just a few weeks before, Can I Take My Hounds to Heaven? was released in September 2022.

In the eight songs he picked for Can I Take My Hounds to Heaven?, Childers crafts a gospel song cycle of originals, instrumentals, and covers that fuses his Baptist upbringing and his more universalist outlook on life. Traditional gospel songs like “Two Coats” and “The Old Country Church” live alongside the man and his dog story of the title track, the pretty “Heart You Been Tendin’,” and a new version his 2017 song “Purgatory.” Particularly affecting is “Angel Band,” Childers’ rewriting of the hymn and poem of the same name. Childers lands a balance between his conviction in the song’s we’re-all-brothers message and still affirming his own Christianity deftly and delivers it like a true believer.

So what the hell is up with this three versions thing? Well, the first disc, recorded live over two days of sessions with his band The Food Stamps, is a raw country-funk album by a well-honed live band working their magic.

The second disc is essentially the Phil Spector mix of the album, adding overdubs of strings, horns, choirs, sitar, and whatever else Childers wants. It’s a sound that both works with the original versions and brings out the religious ecstasy of the lyrics. The standout is the revivalist stomper “The Way of the Truine God,” where the addition of a Dixieland jazz band turns it into a full-on jamboree.

But it’s on disc three where things gets weird. Recruiting producer Charlie Brown Superstar, Childers transforms the album into instrumental hip hop a la The Avalanches or DJ Shadow. Strands of songs are plucked out, tweaked, and made into soundscapes that reveal the shape of the record. You can hear Childers’ creativity running wild, expanding his vision of the album beyond himself as he brings a new lens to the versions before it.

Can I Take My Hounds to Heaven? is a daring album for Tyler Childers that he delivers with a sinner’s charm and a saintly grace.