Lee Tyler Post is working a lot of things out on this record...but you won't notice the pathos while you're first being drawn in by the engrossing music and the utterly memorable monster hooks.  This is ideal music for a quiet night, or for a road trip, with your soul as the subtext destination.  

This record may not grab you right away, but after a few listens the songs will reach in and take hold, which is symptomatic of a classic recording.  

What's also symptomatic is when the songs transcend their instrumentation; much more seems to be conveyed by these bare-bones guitar and vocal arrangements than would seem possible.  It's always the small things, and on 'Life Without Fences' they're the skillfully layered nuances; a little harmonica here, second guitar and/or vocal there...all of the layering perfectly serves the well-written songs.

There's a lot of soul in these tracks, which seem to channel several genres into one new and different one, about as close to one's own sound as one can get and still be listenable.  There's a lot of heartland grit and motor city soul, and one could use or refrain from using the term "country," since it seems to apply in some respects, but is ultimately too limiting to this music.

Post's huge voice cuts to the quick on every track.  He runs circles around Springsteen on the epic opener, 'Vagabond', and goes bigger than Tom Waits on the we're-not-in-Kansas-anymore sojourn of 'Contemplation'.  The stand-out cut is 'Sara', which was perormed live in the studio and gets even more intimate than the other songs, if you can believe that.  This song is akin to someone like Otis Redding or Al Green singing on a front porch in Tennessee, and his words are cut-to-the-quick introspective:  "I know it's hard when you're living all alone/Sometimes this world's so cruel/But the world's only cruel when you're living like a fool/And baby, that's exactly what you do"

'Life Without Fences' is classic stuff, and until you own it you'll be less alive.
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Like many of his fans, I've been waiting for this first installment of Lee Tyler Post’s bootleg series. And I must say it was worth the wait.

There's something about this album that's reminiscent of his earlier works--especially HOUSE OF MILES and EMANCIPATE--yet, for all those echoes, LTP's audience gets a taste of something new and very special in LIFE WITHOUT FENCES. This is music that's unadulterated by over-production. While none of LTP's CDs are burdened by too much of anything, this album is sparce and raw and intimate and... perfect. A collection born of the road, the product of many miles, it’s only fitting that each track take the listener across wide, open spaces. Songs creap quietly onto this album and surprise you with their power; from first to last, each one evokes a new landscape, another reminder of this artist’s tremendous versatility.

Powerful in its simplicity and rich in its delivery, through LIFE WITHOUT FENCES, Lee Tyler Post proves what anyone who has seen him perform live already knows, that one man and a guitar can create magic.
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