STEPHEN WILSON, JR. - "Exorcisms On The Weekend" - Big Loud Records/Mercury Records/UMG

Every small town has one. I'd bet yours did, too: the woman people whisper about at the diner, who keeps strange hours and skips the Sunday pew. Yet when the doctors have shrugged and the prescriptions have run out, the town knocks on her door anyway, usually after dark. On "Exorcisms on the Weekend," Stephen Wilson Jr. gives her a song big enough to hold her. The first time I heard it, I turned it up, then sat very still.

Released October 16 alongside the tender "yellow brick home," it's plainly the wilder half of the double single. To my ears, it carries the kitchen-table-meets-garage-band spirit of his 2023 debut, søn of dad, into bolder territory: the same grief, family, and faith, with a little brimstone and a lot of distortion. It may be the most confident thing he has released yet.

Wilson sketches his heroine in quick, sure strokes: a saint and a lion, good with dogs and all kinds of people, the "fireman" first through a burning door. That word stopped me; it drops her into a role the world usually saves for men and dares anyone to object. She works for free, mans the gate, and "knocks down anything that levitates," my favorite line of the year. I still grin every time it comes around.

What I admire most is how little Wilson explains. He never tells us how she learned her trade; he treats demon-wrangling the way another writer might treat fixing tractors. That deadpan is where the humor lives. She isn't a grim figure out of a horror film. In my head, she's tough, a little tired, and keeps a thermos of coffee on the truck seat. I'd trust her with my life, then buy her a beer.

Still, it's her faith that stays with me. She doesn't like church, and church doesn't like the way she works all night. She falls asleep during morning prayer, sure the Lord isn't keeping attendance. Wilson delivers that without a sneer. This isn't a song that mocks belief; it's about belief that has outgrown the building, measured in nights spent standing between ordinary people and whatever is coming for them.

The sound sits in Wilson's sweet spot, between a country storyteller's patience and a grunge band's muscle. Co-producing with Ben West, he keeps every verse as clear as a tailgate tale, then lets the guitars roll in thick, fuzzy, and a little dangerous. I'm glad they left it rough; a song about someone who does the dirty work shouldn't sound scrubbed clean. His voice moves from wry to a full-throated roar, gritty but warm. He sounds like he's on her side, and by the end, so was I.

And that chorus is a hook you could build a bonfire around. "When every other pill's been tried" plays as darkly funny legend and as a sober nod to anyone for whom medicine wasn't the whole answer. By the third pass, the line about the Lord not caring didn't sound like rebellion to me anymore; it sounded like peace. When the title turns into a closing chant, I defy anyone not to sing along.

Strip away the demons, and this is a song about people we all know: the nurse on a double shift, the friend who answers at 3 a.m. She's "the only one that sees them," and I hear in that line every battle fought unseen, from addiction to grief. Wilson offers no cure, only something humbler: the portrait of someone who notices and doesn't leave. To me, it plays like a long-overdue thank-you note.

The detail that moved me most arrives almost in passing: she does this work "with her momma by her side." That one line suggests a family calling handed down, and in a song full of fire and brimstone, its tenderness is what I remember. I'm grateful Wilson doesn't hand her a tidy redemption arc. Some heroes never get a parade. They just get up and do it again next weekend.

For my money, this is Wilson at his most vivid and humane: funny without being a joke, spiritual without preaching, and loud without losing its heart. That closing chant was made for a packed room, and I can't wait to hear it live. Put it on late, turn it up, and leave the porch light on.

(Review Written By: Dave Pierce)