Wiser Time — There’s A Change A Comin’

Wisertimemusic.com

Protest music first took hold in the early ’60s, and Wiser Time feels like he’s still carrying that torch 65 years into the struggle. The New Jersey singer‑songwriter Carmen Sclafani has been releasing sharp, socially tuned records since his 2006 debut There And Back Again, followed by All For One (2008), Beggars And Thieves (2010), XII (2012), Within (2017), the World’s Collide EP, and All Fired Up in 2024. He’s the kind of artist who drops in every couple of years to take the temperature of the world — and report back.

His latest, There’s A Change A Comin’, opens with a stinging rebuke in “Barabbas,” where flinty acoustic guitar frames lyrics aimed squarely at the moral rot of the moment. It’s a song that asks who we’re willing to excuse — and what that says about us.

The record moves fluidly between political and personal terrain. The bruised bottleneck blues of “Cold Hard World” sits alongside the contemplative “1963,” a tribute to the architects of change — Guthrie, Seeger, Dylan, Dr. King, and Kennedy. His mordant humor surfaces in the ramshackle “Billionaire’s Blues,” while tenderness threads through “If You Never See Me Again” and “Divided,” even as the lyrics stay tough‑minded.

Topical cuts land hard. “Even” takes aim at media manipulation with roughneck grace, and “The People’s House” delivers a pointed critique of the January 6th insurrectionists. The album closes with the poignant farewell of “I Will Walk You Home,” a reminder that even in fractured times, compassion still has a place.

As the Bard of Hibbing once said, you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. Wiser Time clearly still hears it — and he’s still writing songs to make sure the rest of us do too.