Rediscover: Vic Chesnutt: About to Choke

Rediscover:
Vic Chesnutt
About to Choke
1996


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Rediscover is a series of reviews highlighting past releases that have flown under the radar and now deserve a second look.

The fact that Vic Chesnutt was able to release even one album on a major label is still almost impossible to believe. The bulk of his songs - sparse, dark, grimly humorous - made for a lousy mainstream fit, and perhaps not surprisingly, his time with Capitol ended after About to Choke was issued in 1996. But seemingly every year a major likes to champion a left-of-the-dial artist as a sign of its indie credibility, and, thanks in large part to the Sweet Relief II tribute album that preceded About to Choke, Chesnutt was once, however briefly, that artist.

If Capitol had expected a polished, ready-for-the-masses record, they likely were sorely disappointed. Chesnutt gave up none of his rough-as-sandpaper edges on About to Choke, as several songs featured Chesnutt alone on vocals, guitar, piano and a Yamaha Portasound keyboard. Its subject matter was likewise vintage Chesnutt, with the artist again returning to the types of meditations about life - and, more frequently, death - that dominated Little through Is the Actor Happy?. Almost every aspect of About to Choke, from the out-of-focus cover shot of the wheelchair-bound Chesnutt in a strangely-lit room to the songs' somber content, signaled that he likely didn't give a damn which label was releasing the record.

There is a noticeable difference in Chesnutt's lyrical style throughout much of About to Choke, and several songs are more abstract and oblique than those of the musician's previous albums. On spectral opening track "Myrtle," the singer hints at some misdeed - "I'm horrified now I could do such a thing" - and possibly a resulting cataclysmic event whose impacts can't be understood; he ends the song with one of the album's most visceral images: "It was bigger than me/ And I felt like a sick child/ Dragged by a donkey/ Through the myrtle}." The subject of the equally skeletal "Tarragon" is likewise open to conjecture; Chesnutt had stated that the opening line about someone "suckin' on a toothpick soaked with cinnamon" was inspired by one of his earliest memories, but the rest of the song remains mysterious, most noticeable for the haunting tone it takes as Chesnutt repeats the phrase "the boys in the back room played on." "Swelters" is similarly evasive - the singer liked to say it was about sex, and with lines like "after the cool/ When it's wound on the spool/ When it is spent/ You're rarely glad it went," maybe he was being sincere. Elsewhere, references to illness and death punctuate the album; between "Giant Sands," "Threads" and "Hot Seat," there are mentions of a blood clot, a brain that feels like a "brittle fragile vessel," "secret tequila shots and a patch of morphine" and, in another of Chesnutt's brutally direct lines, "shallow rattling breath/ With a wee cough."

Chesnutt returns to his narrative style on two of the album's most poetic songs; both "New Town" and "See You Around" are as literate and expertly crafted as anything he had released on his first four records. "New Town" is far removed from the "filthy steps/ The cold concrete" and small-town Athens that underscored so many of the musician's previous songs; instead Chesnutt offers, one assumes, a satirical depiction of suburbia, complete with a green police force, smiling politicians and old ladies with busy social calendars. His vocals are almost too warm and polite, an effect that heightens the song's cynical humor.

"See You Around" matches this lyricism in "New Town" while sharing plenty of its cynicism; it also might be Chesnutt's defining fuck-off song. Never before had his bile been more focused or vitriolic, the song's insults mounting as he practically spits out the words. The song begins simply, congenially, with an apology, as Chesnutt vows civility - "I'll save us both the hassle and leave" - apparently willing to shoulder the blame. But in the song's final verse there is an abrupt shift; the apology gives way to classic Vic venom, his voice rising to a mocking sneer as he gets in a few final shots, ending with one of his most barbed insults to date: "Well I'm sorry/ But your routine is coming off a bit ragged."

About to Choke is commonly considered one of the musician's lesser works; Chesnutt himself was relatively ambivalent about the album, but then again he was frequently dismissive of almost everything he'd done. He really didn't have time for the niceties, including those about himself, and if praise for the record in 1996 was a little muted, in retrospect time has been good to it. There are a few throwaways - the distorted "It's No Secret (Satisfaction)" and the goofy "Little Vacation" don't really fit in well - but there are enough good songs here that warrant a better standing for the album. That it was done under the watchful eyes and big budget of a major label is incidental; it's the content that matters, and with About to Choke, Chesnutt can be seen evolving as a writer even as he reused elements of his Texas Hotel albums.

Rediscover: The Dashboard Saviors: Kitty

Rediscover:
The Dashboard Saviors
Kitty
1992



The Dashboard Saviors released three studio albums in four years - 1992's Kitty, 1993's Spinnin On Down and 1995's Love Sorrow Hatred Madness - before disbanding. Not that many people outside of Athens, GA noticed. The band was met with commercial and critical indifference throughout their brief career; a feature write-up in Rolling Stone's "New Faces" section in December 1992 was the closest the group ever came to sucking at the mainstream teat, and time has done little enhance the band's legacy. Perhaps the supreme insult, Saviors vocalist Todd McBride is better known for his connection to Vic Chesnutt than for his work with his own band: he played with Chesnutt in the La Di Das and also asked the musician to write a song with the line that opens "Isadora Duncan" on Little.

Produced by Peter Buck, Kitty remains an overlooked masterwork, with scratchy, sometimes slightly polished country-rock songs featuring McBride's nasal, reedy vocals and a core group (Michael Gibson on guitar, Rob Veal on bass and John Crist on drums) that does balladry and hard rock equally well. Scattered throughout are contributions from Buck, Mike Mills, John Keane, David Blackmon and Tim White, with Chesnutt providing occasional backing vocals. Much of the album consists of character studies of life in the small-town South; indeed, the shadow of what Chesnutt once described as "that most famous Georgia college town" - or at least how we perceive small towns - looms large over the record.

Its songs are those of everyday small-scale misery where there is nothing romantic about rural life. One would be hard-pressed to find a character more pitiful than the nameless protagonist - a one-time, and one assumes, anonymous musician - of country weeper "A Trailer's a Trailer." Its desolate images - a swig of warm beer, a baby crying above the buzzing of a window fan, a broken-down shitbox Dodge in the yard (of course), a pawned guitar, his inability to correctly sing a song he knows by heart - are accented by fiddle and pedal steel and all convey a seemingly hopeless situation. What prevents the song from being just another clichéd, booze-soaked honky tune are its narrative details: a faded bumper sticker of a shark in sunglasses that deadpans "Ain't life hard;" a domestic fight after "The Cosby Show;" a cigarette lit on a hot plate. By the end of the song the man doesn't have much to show for himself other than some hard-learned wisdom: "A dead end's a dead end/ And a trailer's a trailer/ Even if it's double wide."

Several of Kitty's other characters similarly lead lives on the skids. Images of restlessness and boredom mixed with loneliness are frequent. "Tracy's Calendar" describes the archetypal sad-eyed female, this one apparently with a mental or physical illness, while the disconcertingly jaunty arrangement of "Been Meaning To Do" belies the desperation experienced by someone who wakes up to "another morning in sunshine hell" and can only pathetically "count your blessings and . . . come up short." This type of ennui also defines "Town," a somber ballad that examines how two polar opposites react to the confines of their hometown; delinquent Johnny lights up a Salvation Army box by making a Molotov cocktail from a "Boone's Farm bottle and an Aerosmith T-shirt and some gas from his daddy's car," while "daddy's perfect girl" Julie meets a man with a "greasy frown" and ends up with a ripped dress and "tears in her eyes/ Little bruises on her thighs." They beg for Jesus to get them the hell out; we never find out how their stories end, and we probably don't want to.

"If you think I'm being cynical/ Well yeah, you're probably right," McBride sings on "Cabaret College," and he's not joking. The title act of "Consummation" brings nothing but sadness and is reduced to a series of post-deed excuses - "You'll blame the wine and I'll blame the weather" - while on the combative "Dropping" he rails against a woman who's "dropping your trousers without any shame." Even the album's rare moments of humor are coated in such cynicism. The rollicking "Drivin' Blind" describes a woman who's either got the world by the balls or is cold as hell as she mocks the narrator as nothing more than a "nickel a half dozen" - dude sheepishly agrees - and is unmoved by a man begging for food. The satirical "The Coach's Wife" is driven by White's raucous barroom piano as McBride's ramshackle vocals talk about the title figure, an absolute souse who drinks "gin with champagne chasers" and dreams of a career in politics. Even the album's most tender moments - the childhood remembrances of "G.I. Joe" - are offset by the fact that those simple days exist only in memory. It's fitting that the album ends with the fire-and-brimstone, and probably shady, radio evangelist of "Brother Shiloh Collins."

Available on iTunes but a complete bitch to track down an original copy of, it's likely that for the near future not too many new listeners will come around to Kitty. It's worth the effort to locate a copy though, and of all the great lost Southern rock operas that have come out of Athens, few are better crafted and more deserving of recognition than Kitty.

Rediscover: brute. - Nine High a Pallet

Rediscover:
brute.
Nine High a Pallet
1995


Rediscover is a series of reviews highlighting past releases that have flown under the radar and now deserve a second look.

News of Vic Chesnutt's suicide in late 2009 was followed by numerous career assessments and eulogies for a musician whose mainstream profile was marginal at best. These articles largely focused on Chesnutt's solo work, overlooking his side projects and thus creating an incomplete, though highly sympathetic, appraisal of the artist's life and career. In some ways this is understandable. Though nearly all of his albums featured full-band arrangements, Chesnutt was never really able to shake the media's perception of him as the solitary, weirdo Southern folkie we first heard on Little.

Fifteen years after its release, Nine High a Pallet, Chesnutt's first collaboration with members of Widespread Panic as the lower-cased band brute., stands as perhaps his most successful side project, with the possible exception of the Elf Power-assisted Dark Developments. Recorded over two days in December 1993 and released in September 1995 - the same year as Is the Actor Happy? - the album mixes songs representative of Chesnutt's early 1990s style and subject matter with curiosity pieces (including a Hoyt Axton cover) as well as a few others that deserve consideration as among Chesnutt's best. Several songs could cozy up comfortably to Actor. The first half of "Westport Ferry" consists of guitar, occasional harmonica and pedal steel - immediately reminiscent of "Gravity of the Situation" - while the song's latter half utilizes a quiet-loud dynamic similar to "Free of Hope" and "Strange Language." The song's macabre story is vintage early Chesnutt; in this case, the narrator sings about, "Warm bodies in plastic wrap" and muses over"Brilliant men/...lost in that murky deep." "Cataclysm" closes Pallet on a comparable musical and lyrical note. With phrases like "Bang the hubcap slowly" and "The cataclysm is over/ They've swept away the shards," it's tempting to read the song as autobiographical - another thinly-veiled nod to the car crash that left Chesnutt paralyzed - but the song is ultimately ambiguous. Indeed, we never find out what exactly the cataclysm was, only that the "horror clocks" have been reset and that "the tragic path" has been cleared.

But a large portion of Nine High a Pallet is unlike anything Chesnutt had recorded previously, showing how Widespread Panic's Southern roots rock contributed to Chesnutt's loosest, loudest and most atypical songs up to that point. Severe and shredding electric guitar, bar-room keyboards and heavy percussion drive several songs, especially "Bastards in Bubbles," "George Wallace" and "Good Morning Mr. Hard On," maybe the least subtly-titled song in Chesnutt's entire catalog. "PC" is likewise an anomaly, its circus-like keyboards framing one of Chesnutt's more mocking, if somewhat less vitriolic than normal, put-down songs. The everyday family tale of "Protein Drink/Sewing Machine" ranks as one of Chesnutt's most sludgy, punishing songs, its nine bizarre minutes incorporating fuzzy guitars and echoed, distorted vocals. Chesnutt would eventually include a starker version of "Sewing Machine" on Skitter On Take-Off.

Nine High a Pallet can be considered Chesnutt's first truly "experimental" album; even more so than Drunk, it moves away from the folk-based structures of Little and West of Rome and also hints at the type of songs he'd record with increasing frequency after About To Choke. In light of Chesnutt's suicide some songs are like hard punches to the gut, especially "Blight" ("I set into a downward spiral/ Got an illness that was literally viral") and "Miserable," a tactile song of spider veins, alcohol and vitals that sounds like a thematic cousin to "Lucinda Williams" and "Stupid Preoccupations." There will now be plenty of time to find examples of ominous foreshadowing throughout this catalog, but Chesnutt's music is not a two decades-long suicide note. Nine High a Pallet showcases Chesnutt in top form and, above all else, dispels the popular image of Chesnutt as purely a solo artist.

Tribute: Vic Chesnutt (1964-2009)

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It's the news that we have been dreading and perhaps expecting for years: Vic Chesnutt is dead, most likely by suicide. Chesnutt always seemed older than his years and living on borrowed time: the cracked voice; those loosely-fitting clothes that suggested he was nothing but bones underneath them; the wheelchair and the limitations they imposed on him. Suicide was never a stranger in the singer's life or his songs. In various interviews he acknowledged several previous suicide attempts with a disarming degree of candor; "I flirted with you all my life/ Even kissed you once or twice" is how he addressed the subject on At The Cut. "Florida," written as an elegy for a friend who killed himself, now sounds even more chilling:

A man must take his life in his own hands
Hit those nails on the head
And I respect a man who goes to where he wants to be
Even if he wants to be dead

Most of the obituaries that have been written thus far have invariably typecast Chesnutt as a humorless and death-obsessed Southern folkie. Certainly Chesnutt spent much of his musical, and one imagines, private life confronting the types of questions about mortality many of us would prefer to keep at a safe distance. But the musician's work went far beyond that simplistic characterization; his songs could be cruel, comforting, comical and caustic all at once. At their best they told us something about the beauty and tragedy of life, about companionship and isolation, about hope and hopelessness.

His lyrics could paint pictures more vividly and believably than any painter's canvass; his songs were undeniably poetic. In Chesnutt's songs life was presented in startling detail; a bizarre, fragile and occasionally humorous world came alive in a Vic Chesnutt song. He saw the minute details about the world that most of us cannot or have been conditioned to ignore:

The filthy steps, the cold concrete
The phony earth below my feet
The ancient odor of the street
Yes the world, world, world it is a sponge
"Sponge" (from West of Rome)

Life is often portrayed as painfully transient at best in a Vic Chesnutt song. His albums are littered with characters whose little dramas we can recognize as our own and take consolation in. Chesnutt's musical worldview could be remarkably bleak; even the blissful innocence of childhood couldn't last forever. In his songs he reminded us that eventually we'll become more cynical, distant and indifferent to the world around us as we age:

And a little bitty baby draws a nice clean breath
From over his beaming momma's shoulder
He's staring at the worldly wonders that stretch just as far as he can see
But he'll stop staring when he's older
"New Town" (from About To Choke)

Time is rarely anyone's friend in a Vic Chesnutt song: it inexorably rolls on with or without us. That he could express such sentiments without resorting to melodrama is a testament to his unique lyrical and vocal abilities. When he wasn't twisting the knife into one of his hapless victims, Chesnutt could pose such questions about mortality, aging and the past with both sympathy and tenderness. He knew more about loss and loneliness than any one person should have had to:

Betty Lonely
She will always think in Spanish
Though I know her Spanish black hair will start to fade
"Betty Lonely" (from Is the Actor Happy?)

Conversely some of his songs reflect a fidelity and sense of promise that at least temporarily brightens the suffering lives that played out in his albums. A listener has to look hard and past all the jilted lovers left at the altar, coldest cadavers in the state and dead pigeons in the weeds to find such optimism, but it is there for anyone who wants to find it. If Chesnutt's music usually leans heavily towards total despair, glimpses of light still peak through. He could be unapologetically sentimental:

Cuddling up
Declarations of love
Squeeze and a hug
A kiss and a rub
Faces opposed
Eyelids closed
Nuzzling nose
Like Eskimos
"In My Way, Yes" (from Silver Lake)

In concert it was difficult to watch him perform; his stage presence was simple, genuine and unbearably heartbreaking. He'd sit in the wheelchair and sing in that fractured voice that could wrench meanings out of the even the simplest line or melody, his face twisting and contorting to the words, the bony fingers that actually worked impossible to ignore as they picked at a guitar. When it was time for an encore he'd simply roll the wheelchair back a few feet, wait and then roll it forward towards the microphone. Yet underneath that frail exterior was a defiance and confidence that suggested he knew how great these songs were, and that we'd better goddamn listen. He could quiet a belligerent crowd as easily with his acidic tongue as he could with his lyrics:

Chesnutt: Here's a song about my world actually.
Fan: It's our world, bro!
Chesnutt: It's my yard, motherfucker.
Introducing "Chinaberry Tree," 11/2/09 Athens, GA

It will be impossible to listen to his albums in the same way again. Many of Chesnutt's lyrics will now take on even darker implications in light of his death, and his memory will haunt these songs forever. For those closest to him, his death is a loss that words will never adequately describe. For those who only knew him via his songs, that loss is likewise deeply felt. His music touched our lives and put into words the indignities we endure, and he did it without ever coming across as weepy or self-pitying. He stared down the harsh realities of both his life and our lives with an endearing amount of honesty. He never glossed over anything in his songs - atheism, death, aging, mortality, the past - and he did it with a mixture of humor of the blackest sort and a remarkably colloquial yet poetic ear for language.

Today "Florida" sounds eerily prophetic:

Yes a man must make unpopular decisions, surely from time to time
And a man can only stand what a man can stand
It's a wobbly, volatile line

Vic Chesnutt dangled on that line for longer than most in his situation probably could have. His legacy will be defined by the songs that revealed the scars he'd received throughout life and how he coped with such pain. He wrote some of the most beautiful and disturbing songs any musician has created. For all of us, that will just have to be enough.


by Eric Dennis

Vic Chesnutt: At the Cut

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If as a culture we prefer to keep our mortality at a safe and comfortable distance, such an approach has never found its way into Vic Chesnutt's music. The musician whom Michael Stipe rushed into a recording studio for fear of Chesnutt's songs never getting recorded has now been plugging along for more than 20 years, reminding us of our ultimate demise with a mixture of humor, pathos, derision and sympathy. Amid all the bizarre weirdos, tragic figures and other conflicted characters that populate Chesnutt's songs, death has been among the most frequent themes in his music. In most cases these meditations on the Great Beyond have been accompanied by the musician's darkly cynical humor, whether it's in the starkly arranged suicide lament of "Florida," the ancestral invocations of "Aunt Avis" or the poor, "coldest cadaver in the state," who meets an icy and altogether unpleasant end in "Mr. Reilly."

Chesnutt again stares down death throughout much of At the Cut. The suicide fantasy of "When The Bottom Fell Out" can be interpreted either literally or metaphorically; minimally arranged with just Chesnutt on acoustic guitar, its narrator describing himself hurling toward the earth, sardonically quoting Woody Guthrie on the way down ("So long/ It's been good to know ye"), eventually crashing into "that verdant grass." "Flirted With You All My Life," an alternately strong-willed and cowering address to death, is impossible not to view as autobiographical, with references to both Chesnutt's own suicide attempts ("I flirted with you all my life/ Even kissed you once or twice") and a friend's suicide (perhaps the poet John Seawright or Steve Buczko, who "hit those nails on the head" in "Florida"). The song is ultimately ambivalent; though the singer realizes that he's not ready to die, the last image we're left with is of Chesnutt's "cancer sick" mother reduced to begging for death to come.

A sense of remembrance ties several songs together. Though these tracks stop short of consolation, they nevertheless imply that there's some comfort to be found in such fleeting memories. Chesnutt offers a somewhat uncharacteristically straightforward vocal approach on the delicate "Concord Country Jubilee" as he recalls a series of childhood events and images - scraped knees, homemade ice cream and an adolescent kiss - that take place within the innocent atmosphere of a county fair. Chesnutt's grandmother, a frequent figure in the musician's songs, makes an appearance in the sparsely arranged and truly heartbreaking "Granny," in which Chesnutt recalls snippets of phrases and mundane everyday details from his beloved grandmother. The song speaks to the sense of loss that is felt throughout the album as well as the tight bond that unites family members across different generations. When Chesnutt quotes his grandmother - "You are the light of my life/ And the beat of my heart-" it's both tender and troubling, the type of simple phrase from a loved one that we all carry in our minds and remember with both affection and a sometimes unshakable sadness.

Musically, At the Cut recalls both Chesnutt's folk leanings as well as the jagged edges that dominated North Start Deserter. In some ways this isn't surprising, as the singer sometimes carries songs with him for years before they land on an album (some fans may recognize "Coward," "When The Bottom Fell Out" and "Granny" from various live recordings). Regardless, the album is better balanced than Deserter, which sometimes sounded overly abrasive just for the hell of it. Deserter collaborators, including members of A Silver Mt. Zion, Guy Picciotto from Fugazi and producer Howard Bilerman again give the album muscle: after a tentative beginning, "Coward" explodes with an imposing wall of noise and severe strings that cut and stab, "Philip Guston (with Clark Coolidge)" finds Chesnutt snarling his vocals over a flood of guitars and the hacking-the-shit-out-of-a-tree tale of "Chinaberry Tree" is suitably aggressive and tense. A flood of images cascades over squalls of guitars and piercing strings in "It Is What It Is," which in many ways sounds like an updated version of the atheist declarations of "Speed Racer:" "I'm not a pagan/ I don't worship anything/ Not gods that don't exist/ Nor the sun which is oblivious/... And I don't need stone altars/ To help me hedge my bet/ Against the looming blackness."

This assertion is perhaps At the Cut's most singular vow of defiance in an album littered with conflicting emotions. Mortality and memories flood its songs in an unnerving mix of hope and despair, determination and defeat, and Chesnutt's self-described tendency towards being "painfully nostalgic" takes on a more urgent tone throughout the album. Though a few songs never quite emerge from these dark shadows - the falsetto singing of "We Hovered With Short Wings" deadens one of Chesnutt's more poetic efforts, while "Chain" is the record's least memorable track - this release contains an affecting and moving set of songs that mostly plays to Chesnutt's strengths as a musician and lyricist. While its inclusions offer numerous parallels to Chesnutt's back catalog, rarely have his songs sounded so unflinching. When it comes to songs about dying and the past Vic Chesnutt has never bullshitted. Judging from this album, it's clear he doesn't plan to start that anytime soon.

Three Favorite Albums of 2008

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3. J. Matthew Gerken, Christian Kiefer, and Jefferson Pitcher -
Of Great and Mortal Men: 43 Songs for 43 U.S. Presidencies [Standard Recording]

Authored by musicians J. Matthew Gerken, Christian Kiefer, and Jefferson Pitcher, and originally conceived as part of the February Album Writing Month project in 2006, Of Great and Mortal Men: 43 Songs for 43 U.S. Presidencies was an ambitious effort that explored the mythology and history of the American presidency and the men who have alternately honored or shat upon that office. Ranging from songs of sympathy to those of scathing criticism and satire, and featuring contributions from many indie musicians, it successfully avoided the overindulgence and self-importance that sometimes plagues concept albums.

The songs were often structured as either character portraits or deathbed confessionals, with many of the presidents judged harshly. Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor, and William Henry Harrison were dismissed as war profiteers, Chester Arthur was depicted as an egotistical bastard, and George W. Bush was derided as stubborn and uncompromising fundamentalist. Even George Washington reeked of cynicism and Machiavellian expediency, with Kiefer portraying him as a silver-tongued political shyster:

Yet there were still some genuine moments of compassion, sympathy, or praise. Bill Callahan transformed John Tyler into an object of pity who unintentionally fell ass-backwards into the presidency after his predecessor's unexpected death in 1841. Pitcher imagined Harry Truman as a morally conflicted man and a mess of warring emotions. In perhaps the album's best song, the gorgeous and aching "Helicopters above Oakland," U.S. Grant was presented as a tired former soldier looking back in dismay at the ruin caused by the Civil War.

As Americans we tend to mythologize the presidency into beyond-epic proportions. This release looked past that bullshit and instead focused on the nation's leaders as regular, and sometimes very flawed, people.

2. Wilderness - (k)no(w)here [Jagjaguwar]

Conceived as a single musical piece and inspired by a collaboration with artist Charles Long, (k)no(w)here was a foreboding and menacing release from the Baltimore collective. Songs bled into each other without any discernible break; to the listener it created an odd effect of being trapped inside a lunatic's mind. Throughout the album lead singer James Johnson yelped, barked and howled on top of the band's aggressive guitars and drums, his words oddly enunciated and often times unintelligible save for a few repeated phrases or snatches of lyrics. When Johnson's words were understandable, they almost always hinted at some type of upcoming but unnamed disaster, usually with a heavy dose of social or political undertones. Evocative of bands like PiL, Fugazi, and The Jesus Lizard, (k)no(w)here was both difficult to comprehend and yet, in the election year of a country with an economy going into the crapper and an outgoing administration that can't slink away soon enough, also somehow perfectly timely.

1. Vic Chesnutt, Elf Power, and the Amorphous Strums - Dark Developments [Orange Twin]

An album that combined Vic Chesnutt's ability to craft melodies and darkly humorous lyrics with his penchant for distortion and electricity, Dark Developments was the singer's best effort since The Salesman and Bernadette. Joined by Elf Power and frequent backing band the Amorphous Strums, Chesnutt set aside the plodding vocal arrangements and murky production that plagued Ghetto Bells and the bursts of random noises that made North Star Deserter sound too experimental for its own good in favor of tight songs that relied heavily on background vocals and melodies you could even hum.

The album served up a big helping of anger and cynicism. Chesnutt spat out insults in "Little Fucker;" though the target was never named, it was tempting to view the song as a much-deserved dismissal of any number of people from the outgoing Bush regime. Other songs like "Stop the Horse" and "Teddy Bear" were also fodder for similar political interpretations.
Yet the album never got bogged down in political polemics; the subject matter was specific enough to suggest a certain topic but vague enough to allow music fans and overzealous critics to speculate wildly about each song. Overall the album was a cohesive synthesis of what still makes Chesnutt's music so original and fascinating - a melody that lodges in your brain and won't get out, a disturbing or bleakly humorous lyric and a keen eye for the mundane details of life and death.

Music Review - Vic Chesnutt, Elf Power, and the Amorphous Strums - Dark Developments

For anyone who’s still clinging to the image of Vic Chesnutt as a mostly-acoustic Southern gothic folkie, it’s time to give that idea up. Though his earliest albums were often rooted in such sensibilities – debut album Little in particular – there’s always been a strong current of experimentalism and electricity scattered throughout Chesnutt’s canon. Though such songs were usually structured around mostly-acoustic melodies and traditional structures with Chesnutt’s ragged voice often providing a sharp contrast, others like “Drunk” and “Old Hotel” hinted at such harder edges.

Chesnutt’s last couple releases have made these edges more obvious, albeit to mixed results. Ghetto Bells, which to these damaged ears sounded willfully difficult and today still comes across as mostly ponderous and plodding, found the musician experimenting heavily with various musical textures and production techniques. 2007’s North Star Deserter is perhaps Chesnutt’s most musically aggressive and abrasive album to date. Though that album sported the occasional downbeat song, it was overwhelmingly a damn loud record, full of distortion and other noises that made all the windows in the neighborhood shake.

Dark Developments combines these disparate aspects of Chesnutt’s music and also adds some new tricks along the way. Assisted by (genuflect please) Elf Power and frequent backing band, the Amorphous Strums, it’s the most accessible and consistently good album Chesnutt’s released since The Salesman and Bernadette. Those Vicophiles who still prefer his more melodic songs as well as those who take their Vic with a heavy dose of electricity will both be satisfied.

What’s most noticeable on this album is the way subtle melodies and background vocals are mixed with muscular and sometimes harsh musical arrangements. Nearly every song features a full onslaught of such vocals, which both compliment the melodies and reinforce the collaborative nature of the album. You won’t find many “Dodge” moments here; Chesnutt’s voice is usually just one of many throughout these songs. “Teddy Bear,” “Bilocating Dog,” and “And How” are close to being group sing-alongs, though the subject matter is a far cry from your classic community Kumbayas.

Other songs augment these backing vocals with enough distortion, fuzz, and noise to ensure some ruptured eardrums when played at maximum volume. The subtly-titled “Little Fucker” barrels in with harsh and loud guitars like a kick upside the head. “We Are Mean” carries a similarly aggressive tone; the last minute or so of the song is a racket of swirling noise. Whereas North Star Deserter sometimes seemed to intentionally disregard melody just for the sake of clang-boom-steam, even the louder songs this time around accentuate each song’s melody.

Though playing the game of lyrical analysis is always dicey, some themes recur throughout the album. Several songs are built around wholesome things like anger, disgust, and cynicism. Chesnutt sneers a litany of insults in “Little Fucker,” leaving the unnamed F-bomber in question to “Dry up in the sun/Like a raisin/Or a leather skeleton,” derisively concluding, “He’s good riddance.” In the wryly humorous and bouncy “And How,” Chesnutt takes some more shots at a hapless victim, suggesting that the individual “Open up your trash/Then go take a bath/You’ll need one.”

Like many of Chesnutt’s earlier songs, this release is rife with images of death and decay, often accompanied with dark humor. “Stop the Horse” references a possibly deceased politician whose age might now be counted in dirt years, with Chesnutt singing that he “Can already smell the county bloat.” The upbeat singing of “Teddy Bear” betrays the bleak statement that “He ain’t never coming back;” though who or what the Teddy Bear refers to is open to interpretation.

“Bilocating Dog” is pure dark comedy, complete with a morbid sense of humor and skewed rhyme scheme: “Johnny was a terrier/He had his first seizure/At the feet of old Auntie Lee/You should of heard her screaming.” It should also be noted that this emphasis on death is reflected in the album’s artwork; the painting included on the back cover, with its numerous political undertones, is itself worthy of close examination.

Though some of the new songs are occasionally reminiscent of Chesnutt’s previous songs – opening track “Mystery,” with is prominent harmonica and minimal instrumentation, wouldn’t be out of place on Is the Actor Happy? – Dark Developments marks a noticeable stylistic shift for the artist. Chesnutt’s singing becomes more controlled with each subsequent album; the days when he’d stretch a word like “Florida” into 14 syllables accompanied by sparse instrumentation are long gone. With musical and vocal assists from Elf Power and the Amorphous Strums, the album successfully merges Chesnutt’s penchant for melody with his more experimental and electric tendencies.

Music Review: Vic Chesnutt - North Star Deserter

“My soul in its special hell of wet mortal limits/perpetually thirsting,” Vic Chesnutt sings in “Glossolalia,” the second song from his recently released and truly excellent album, North Star Deserter. And that’s one of the more optimistic songs. Over the course of the album, Chesnutt examines themes of loss, decay, and dread, many times from the point of view of either an observer or participant looking back at the sad wreckage. The result is an often harrowing album that is Chesnutt’s best work since About To Choke.

A feeling of resignation runs throughout the album. The characters in these songs, helpless to undo either past events or change the course of their current situations, are resigned to accept the outcome as a foregone conclusion, and with little resistance. In “Everything I Say,” Chesnutt uses the image of a barn (a loaded image that should get psychology fans really hot and bothered) to arrive at a wry and bleak outlook on the past: “The barn fell down/since I saw it last/it’s rubble now/well so much for the past.” The song “Over” is less poetic but shares a similar theme. “It was fun while it lasted/now it’s all blown away/everything blows away someday/everything turns to dust/big ol’ mountains do/as well as everyone of us,” Chesnutt sings.

Cheery stuff, to be sure, yet the songs avoid slipping into overly maudlin or self-pitying nihilistic nonsense. A lot of that can be attributed to Chesnutt’s voice, at times creaky and frail, and at other times steady and confident. Through it all, Chesnutt’s voice carries the authority of someone who’s seen it before and is not bullshitting. Chesnutt also uses his trademark gallows humor to prevent listeners from staring at their shoes and sobbing quietly while listening to the album. “It’s OK, you can take Vioxx/and it’s OK, you can get a quadruple bypass/and then keep on keeping on,” Chesnutt sings in “You Are Never Alone,” perhaps the most sardonic and humorous song he’s recorded since “Little Vacation.”

The most noticeable departure in North Star Deserter from Chesnutt’s previous albums is the sheer amount of loud and aggressive noise that characterizes some of the songs. With collaborations on this album with members of Fugazi and Godspeed! You Black Emperor, perhaps that’s inevitable. “Debriefing,” with its holy-hell racket of guitars and martial drumbeats, should jolt Chesnutt fans who still view him as the solo acoustic folkie who recorded Little. Likewise, “Glossolalia,” with a melody written by (whisper now) indie hero Jeff Mangum, features a wild mix of viola, violin, and cello that sounds like nothing Chesnutt has ever recorded.

North Star Deserter is littered with images of irreversible loss; like some of Chesnutt’s previous albums, it often deals in ugly endings and images. Even the more pastoral songs reach conclusions that are brutal and harsh, and the consolations offered are small. “Tears do evaporate/but oh so slowly like piss on a toilet seat,” Chesnutt sings in “Marathon.” Certainly it is one of Chesnutt’s more challenging albums. It is also one of his best.