Like many great songwriters, Dean Johnson’s voice is universal, even if he’s only writing about what he knows. His music, rooted in country and Americana, sounds uncoupled from any one time or place, even if he’s a Seattleite through and through. On I Hope We Can Still Be Friends, Johnson’s second LP and first for storied indie label Saddle Creek, he’s drawing from the same well as writers like John Prine or Tom Waits, filtering the light of daily life through the grimy windows of a barroom. (In Johnson’s case, it’s the Wallingford tavern he tended for over a decade, absorbing the plights of boozers drowning their sorrows.) Everything is framed through the wreckage of unrequited love: depression (“Painted Smile”), rampant consumption habits (“Carol”), the sinister bliss…

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