Willy Vlautin’s The Horse – published a couple of years back – was one of those quite perfect novels so seldom encountered. The redemption of Al Ward played out as quest, odyssey, and night journey, all rolled into one, while allowing Vlautin to dig deep into a musical life, to lay open the career phases of a journeyman musician and songwriter, and pay tribute to heroes and contemporaries. To write about a geographical location he loves – the high desert region of Central Nevada and the town of Tonapah – and to play some games with song titles.

His new novel The Left And The Lucky takes him back to the Pacific Northwest and specifically Portland, Oregon. It tells the tale of a friendship between a conscientious, hard-working house painter Eddie Wilkens and the young neighbour boy eight-year old Russell. Eddie comes upon Russell one Saturday evening in a supermarket aisle, feeds him and treats him kindly. This encounter points Russell to a potential refuge from the bullying and neglect he’s experiencing at home and he grabs for it hard.

Russell’s family appears in a doom spiral; his older brother Curtis is out of his depth in a messy adolescence, rejected by his pregnant girlfriend, repeatedly delinquent – and he only knows to punch down. Meanwhile their stripper mother Connie barely copes. As it all implodes Russell escapes more and more to Eddie’s yard; it’s his good fortune that there his need should meet its correlate.

Eddie’s own tale is more complex, unfolding only gradually. A particular skill of Vlautin’s is in feeding out information subtly and by degree, such that much is only appreciated fully on subsequent readings. What we do note very quickly is that Eddie is both caring and long-suffering. He already tolerates two unreliable assistants in the binge-prone, recovering alcoholic, Houston, and the epic bullshitter and trencherman Cordarrel; both brilliant, laugh-out-loud comic creations.

This pair only truly reveal themselves in conversations and transactions with Russell who in so many ways – not least through a growing tenacity – acts as a catalyst to expose the best of people, before the climactic big and consequential adventure in which he assumes the role of saviour. For The Left And The Lucky the ending appears happy, though seemingly not for a third L – the lost Curtis – nor for the tragic Marlene – Eddie’s ex, now in Florida – who we only meet through phone calls.

“I could live forever writing about Russell and Eddie” states Willy in the afterword, and the affection shines off the page. In contrast to The Horse music only features here tangentially; Eddie listens to Sammi Smith and Dusty In Memphis, and finds an Esther Phillips album on vinyl in New Orleans. Then there’s an amusing account of a Monday night bar gig by the immortally named Sonic Rampage during which Russell has this immortal exchange with a walk-on character: ‘Eddie says people who break promises aren’t good people’ ‘But I’m a musician’ Jax said ‘I’m different’.

This is only of note because Willy Vlautin combines novel-writing with helming The Delines and there’s always been a bleed between the two enterprises. The Left And The Lucky grew out of a 2021 short story The Kill Switch which was released as a digital audiobook soundtracked by the band. Some of those pieces now reappear on a complementary – though limited in availability – soundtrack CD featuring thirteen short, mainly instrumental tracks based on episodes in the book.

These are mainly mood pieces produced by Cory Gray, though Amy Boone sings ‘When Marlene Was Marlene’ – set in the pre-novel past – and delivers the ‘Hot For House Painters’ routine, while Willy channels Cordarrel’s ‘Subset Of Super Drinkers’ theory of Chicago-specific natural selection. Cory’s interludes have become an integral element of recent Delines albums; none more so than on The Set Up released only a matter of weeks ago.

Released little more than a year after Mr Luck & Ms Doom; Willy has framed it as the ‘wayward, misguided, and lonely sister‘ to that record. The songs arrived at the same time but rather than concerning movement and agency these are the opposite. Characters like Nancy (‘Nancy And The Pensacola Pimp’) and Maureen (‘Maureen’s Gone Missing’) are trapped in bad situations but take a chance on getting out and it can be a brilliant move. The folk here didn’t make it, or maybe took the wrong chance; they’re in limbo or hospitals, hollowed out and made anonymous, the lives behind opioid epidemic statistics.

While all the components are in place; Cory’s sublime horns and keyboards, Amy’s nuanced soulful voice, and the secure building blocks beneath; this isn’t perhaps entry-level Delines. These are hard stories and the listener needs to tease the essence from their depths. ‘Can You Get Me Out Of Phoenix?’ seems the ultimate anti-Jimmy Webb song and the line “I ain’t built for the sunbelt” somehow conjures memories of that final bus-trip in Midnight Cowboy. Both ‘Dilaudid Diane’ and Bonnie in ‘The Reckless Life’ seem smart women undone despite themselves.

Hunkering down though is no defence; ‘Keep The Shades Down’ suggests hiding from a world which “will keep spinning no matter/If we take a little bit of time to slide” except the consequences play out in the desolately beautiful ‘Walking With His Sleeves Down’ where the ravages of addiction erase all the varied sights, sounds, and wonders of the everyday world. It may be the same guy now institutionalised in ‘The Meter Keeps Ticking’; a song at odds with itself; the relentless rhythm of the meter pushing forward but the cab and its occupant in stasis.

‘The Set Up’ providing the record’s title and framework is a three part spoken-word piece, opening with suitably lonesome trumpet before Amy starts spinning an enticing web of desire and deceit stretching across almost the full-extent of the album. If its denouement is inevitable its passage is mesmerising.

The Delines recently toured the UK and debuted new songs. In the immediate aftermath they went into Rockfield Studios with noted producer John Parish (P.J. Harvey, Howe Gelb). With another album now in the can it would seem there’s no let-up to Willy Vlautin’s creativity.

The Left And The Lucky is published by Faber. The Set Up is released on Decor Records. Willy Vlautin is in the UK for author events in June.