Leon Majcen’s The Leaving Kind is an album built around the uneasy contradiction at the heart of life on the road: the freedom to leave and the things that make you want to stay. The son of Bosnian refugees, Majcen grew up in Safety Harbor, Florida, before moving to Nashville in 2023, and his songs carry the perspective of someone who has made a life out of motion. Produced by Pat Lyons, the album’s ten songs move through country, Americana, blues and honky-tonk without losing their common thread. At just over 33 minutes, *The Leaving Kind* is compact, direct and remarkably consistent in its fascination with highways, relationships, home and the costs of choosing a life in music.
“Slowing Me Down” sets the tone with pedal steel and guitars beneath Majcen’s road-worn vocal, as he weighs the pull of the person waiting at home against the demands of touring. “Falling Short” picks up the pace with barroom piano, fiddle and pedal steel, while “Road Dog Express” strips things back for a bluesier meditation on the freedom and isolation of constantly moving. Majcen broadens the palette on “Turn Me In,” adding horns and a funky rhythm to a song about a narrator whose life is considerably less respectable. “Don’t You Cry” brings the album back to its emotional center, pairing softly delivered vocals with pedal steel and fiddle as the tension between the road and a relationship becomes harder to ignore.
The second half is equally varied. “Float On Down” slows everything down for a laid-back fishing trip that gradually turns reflective, while “Honeybee” leans into country blues with slide guitar and conversational vocals. “Keep You Off My Mind” packs a surprisingly dense story into less than three minutes, following someone attempting to leave the road—and a relationship—behind. “Long Way From Home” returns to the wandering cowboy, with references to Colorado, Texas and Alberta reinforcing the sense of a traveler who can cross half the country without escaping his thoughts of home.
The title track brings those ideas together with the album’s clearest statement of purpose. Over a full-band arrangement of rhythm section, guitars and pedal steel, Majcen acknowledges that leaving isn’t simply something he does; it is something he seems to be. That restlessness is what gives The Leaving Kind its cohesion. Even when Majcen moves into honky-tonk, Memphis soul or country blues, the songs remain connected by the same underlying questions about where a person belongs and what they’re willing to sacrifice to keep moving. The result is an unpretentious, road-tested collection that feels grounded in the classic singer-songwriter tradition without sounding like an exercise in nostalgia. The Leaving Kind doesn’t romanticize the road so much as acknowledge both its freedom and its price—and Majcen sounds entirely comfortable letting those two things coexist. – Jason Felton