While it’s too early to say exactly what songwriter Jake Smith and his band The White Buffalo’s legacy will be, it is safe to say that Smith has a keen storytelling ability. With a wise and weary hard-edged voice, he creates believable characters that you deeply care about. On Shadows, Greys, and Evil Ways, that character is Joey White, who falls in love, goes to war and returns to find his life in a downward spiral. At the end of the album, White seems to realize the errors of his ways, though it seems like a hollow victory. The real victory goes to Smith, who has crafted another moving portrait of today’s uncertain and rocky American Dream.