Aural Fixations

STAN RIDGWAY
Snakebite: Blacktop Ballads & Fugitive Songs
(redFLY)
Stan Ridgway is the Thomas Hart Benton of American popular music. His portraits and playscapes might convey people, places and activities that look normal at first glance, but a closer look betrays the cynical heart and satirical eye that fashioned the work. He's a living synthesis of American musical storytellers, pulling a thread from Stephen Foster through Cole Porter, Woody Guthrie, Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan and Lou Reed, tying the end around his own little finger so he never forgets in which closet he keeps his favorite sport coats. He focuses the songwriting traditions through a lens of beat poetry, cheesy horror movies and junk culture, his characters refracted through a crazy funhouse mirror that makes them undulate and warped like Benton's dervish dancers. Snakebite: Blacktop Ballads & Fugitive Songs is one of Ridgway's most subdued recordings, with relatively straightforward song structures, folk and country-derived melodies and stripped-down arrangements that emphasize his conversational vocals over everything else. Like a carny with a Jim Thompson novel in his pocket, Ridgway proudly directs the viewer to displays of misfits, with petty criminals ("Throw It Away," "Wake Up Sally [the cops are here]"), stoned joyriders ("King For a Day") and chain gang prisoners ("Crow Hollow Blues"), plus a quick stop in front of a sympathetic portrait of a lovelorn soldier ("My Rose Marie"). Somewhere along the way, though, the perspective shifts, as tunes like "Our Manhattan Moment," "Classic Hollywood Ending" and "That Big 5-0" drag more of Ridgway's own inner world into the light than he's ever previously dared. "Talkin' Wall of Voodoo Blues Pt.1" completely strips away any costuming and simply tells the story of Ridgway's time with the cult new wave act Wall of Voodoo. He even manages to make Mose Allison's "Monsters of the Id" sound confessional. This isn't to say he's baring his soul, mind you—detachment is still way too powerful a part of his artistic makeup for that. But he's obviously willing to invite the same scrutiny of his life as a cult rock musician as he does of the protagonists of his crime 'n' crapout dramas, which adds a more empathic nature to all the tunes found here. Snakebite doesn't have the blatant hooks of his early work, and thus requires close attention and patience to appreciate. But the time spent with this record and its iconoclastic creator will be richly rewarding. Michael Toland [buy it]