Another crazy day, fresh from a
work day, straight to a strata council meeting, then a guitar lesson and now I’m
finally home to stay and ready to write – get this review out of my system
while it is still bubbling at the surface.
Disc 582 is….The South Coast of Texas
Year of Release: 1981
What’s up with the Cover? In addition to
being a top notch songwriter, Guy Clark has one fine head of hair. The beard is a harbinger of the grey that is
to come, but here Guy has that perfect “Just For Men” combination of
distinguished grey and natural colour. Is grey creeping up on you? Never fear, men – Guy Clark shows you can own
the grizzling as it happens and not only preserver your dignity, but look good doing
it. So put that box back on that shelf
and exit the London Drugs with your dignity intact.
How I Came To Know It: I knew Guy Clark through both
Dublin Blues and the Live at the Bluebird Café albums (both previously
reviewed) and I was eager to have something else, so I bought the self-titled
third album and…hated it. That put me
off for a while, but I took another chance with “The South Coast of Texas” and
it turned out all right.
How It Stacks Up: I’ve only got two Guy Clark albums (I sold the self-titled
effort) and of the two, “The South Coast of Texas” is the lesser effort. I do plan to get about three more (“Old No. 1”,
“Texas Cookin’” and “Cold Dog Soup” are currently on my radar) but that’s for a
future trip to the old CD store.
Rating: 2 stars but close to 3
The eighties were a dark time for
a lot of different music but none more so than country music. Guy Clark’s album survives the experience as
well as it can, but doesn’t emerge unscathed.
Both the eighties and country
music had a schmaltzy quality that fed off each other in a very ugly fashion. For example, I have a ton of great Emmylou
Harris albums from the seventies, but enter 1981’s “Evangeline” and the spell
is broken with hokey junk. The best song
on it is “Hot Burrito #2” which is a Gram
Parsons seventies number and the second best song, “Ashes By Now” would later be ruined by new country artist Leanne
Womack.
Guy Clark’s “South Coast of Texas”
came out the same year as “Evangeline” and suffers a similar fate. It has too
much of bubble gum pop-style, which Clark has diligently stuck with for years
despite it not suiting his gravelly style.
The album has a number of examples
of doing it wrong, including “Who Do You
Think You Are” which sounds like stodgy old folks having an argument, and “Heartbroke” which although it is about
getting over a heartbreak could use a lot more…sadness. I like a good “pull up
your bootstraps” song but it should always have at least a twinge of
melancholy. Otherwise the listener doesn’t
feel like what you’re recovering from is a big deal. It bothers me that the
lyrics are actually pretty powerful, but the arrangement and the upbeat melody
makes it all feel just a little too fake, or worse, like some guy who doesn’t
get it is giving you a life lesson about staying positive.
So that’s the bad stuff, but there
is plenty of good stuff on this album as well, because at his core Guy Clark is
an amazing songwriter, and I’m glad I didn’t let his self-titled effort
dissuade me. If it is one thing I’ve
learned from artists like Townes Van Zandt and Patty Griffin, it is that those
artists who others remake on a regular basis have something going for him. There is a reason Guy Clark gets to play with
great artists like Emmylou and Karen Matheson, and it is that they recognize
his brilliance.
There’s a good helping of that
brilliance on “South Coast of Texas,” principally on those songs where he turns
down the hokey act and lets his soulful understanding of human character come
out.
“The Partner Nobody Chose” is a sad and rolling track about a woman
desperate for love who has never met the right person. The song plucks (quite
literally) along as it moves through an effortless melody that sounds like it
was written fifty years earlier but is actually a Clark original (co-written with
fellow under-appreciated songwriter Rodney Crowell).
Coming later in the album, “The Partner Nobody Chose” is a nice
bookend to the earlier track, “Crystelle,”
the character study of a young woman still wild with abandon, breaking hearts
right and left with the certainty that there’ll be plenty more where they came
from. Barely a woman, but hardly a child, my favourite stanza is:
“She’s a reason to be reckless, she’s the right to rock
& roll
She’s exactly what they meant when they told you not to go
Her breath’s as sweet as chewing gum
And her heart’s as cold as kingdom come
She’s heaven sent and hell bent to run
Oh me I fell in love now wouldn’t you?”
This is a song about being over
thirty and feeling the warm glow when you get the rare attention – however fleeting
– of a twenty year old. You’ll still go safely home to your wife of course
(unless you’re an idiot) but it is still a nice feeling.
Another favourite is the title
track, which tells the story of the small fishing towns of Texas. The song
mixes Mexican and Western flavours with traditional sea shanty arrangements,
and the combination is sublime.
As an album “South Coast of Texas”
can edge into the trite, but Guy Clark is a master storyteller. When he fully embraces that role, the album rises
above, Clark painting musical portraits of ordinary people, whose stories stand
out like splashes of colour on the rich canvas of South Texas life. Like them,
I enjoy this album despite its faults.
Best tracks: Crystelle, South
Coast of Texas, The Partner Nobody Chose, Lone Star Hotel
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