Blues, bluegrass, mountain music, and even the brooding back-and-forth guitar of singer-songwriter folk show up here and there.īut more than his guitar or banjo playing, it’s Phelps’ lyrics that bear the mark of the same strangeness that passed through Fahey’s acoustic. There are three fine waltzes here, including the melodica-based title track, and “MacDougal,” dedicated to Dave Van Ronk, is a slow ragtime meditation. Like John Fahey, Phelps seems to have dosed himself daily, for a lifetime, with American song forms. If we want to listen, we’re going to have to move onto his pickin’ porch. Phelps is no Brian Wilson wannabe, feet stuck in his own sandbox he’s singing these small songs more for himself than for the rest of us. And the sound is especially notable here: spare, largely acoustic, and deeply introverted. Check out the titles: “Red Light Nickel,” “Tight to the Jar,” “Loud as Ears”-it’s as if they sprang from some random poetry generator, dependent on sound as much as etymology to carry their meanings. Kelly Joe Phelps-who, as Carter did, makes his home in northwestern Oregon, land of lush green horticulture-gets pretty gnarly on his eighth album, Tunesmith Retrofit. If genres are a necessary evil, though, I’ve got a moniker for this subset of Americana: “gnarly.” Used in a literal sense-not as surf slang-it was a favorite word of the late Dave Carter, who used it in speaking and singing about twisted roots and branches, but whose compositions were likewise linguistically deep-footed, intellectually branching, and poetically serpentine. I don’t want to gaze at a lithograph of a mighty oak, no matter how well-rendered I want to climb the tree, feel the Spanish moss, wrap my bare toes around the roots.įortunately, “Americana” came along to give country’s poets, stoners, eccentrics, and philosophers a label to slap on their jewel cases and a fistful of magazines to showcase their stories. Now that’s not a bad definition-and it’s one that Hank or Patsy would likely agree with-but to certain among us, the prosaic simply isn’t enough. What they call country music these days-you know, Oprah with a Stetson-is often touted as having stories you can relate to, told in words you can understand.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |