Review: The Ram collides with love and living on new album, ‘I Am Nowhere, I Am Everywhere’

“It’s a simple truth, from the seed to the root / The fruit of our toil springs forth from the soil… sustenance again,” muses The Ram (Mark O’Donnell) in the closing track of his fresh-pressed, yet somehow still wrinkled, new album. “Warmth of the Fire” burns slow and hot, lingering like campfire sparks lost to the midnight sky. That particular lyric captures the thematic breadth of O’Donnell’s I Am Nowhere, I Am Everywhere, featuring his band in their most natural habitat: live. It’s within such self-exposing truth that serves as the backbone to nine songs, many of which run well over five minutes. It’s a diamond-in-the-rough epoch about what it means to live and die by your own hand. We only have this one life to live, and O’Donnell’s hand-spun songs teach us everything we need to know.

“Don’t hold back / Ride your wave / The only thing guaranteed is perpetual change,” O’Donnell sings on another album essential. His scruffy vocal cords leave such an imprint on the listener, it’s hard to forget by the last frame. “Perpetual Change” preaches on the one constant in our lives: change. Death is change; paying taxes is change; and letting each day carry you away like so many crashing musical waves is change. There’s no avoiding the relentless ticking bomb of time. And love, it’s all about change, too, in covert ways. How we love changes, swiftly moving from budding new friendship to undying loyalty on a deathbed. “Ask me where I’m going / Going way downtown / Ask me what I’ve been up,” he crows in throaty gargles of his windpipe. Love, it seems, deserves to be “spread around,” as he admits to his mission in life with “Love is a Terrible Thing to Waste.”

Start to finish, O’Donnell’s I Am Nowhere, I Am Everywhere is a testament to how to live. It throbs with the desire to love and be loved, as the singer-songwriter moves about the world. He collides into others, sometimes getting caught in their orbits for a time, before moving further out into the universe. Taking a gamble on living comes with risks, but Mark O’Donnell is willing to take them. He relishes the challenge. With his latest record, he uncovers deeper things, more profound things, and things often forgotten to time itself.

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