CD Odyssey Disc 1306: James McMurtry

My friend (and hairdresser) today had the first of an inevitable series of “let’s get real” conversations about the state of my hair. Put bluntly, I’m starting to lose some of it. My think and curly locks hide the damage better than some unfortunates, but it isn’t a permanent solution. My hair is pretty damned important to me, so it’s hard news. At least it is still early stages.

Disc 1306 is… Childish Things

Artist: James McMurtry

Year of Release: 2005

What’s up with the Cover? James strikes a similar pose as my blog profile photo, only not in a cool way. Sorry James, but my sunglasses are more stylish, and I’ve got that hipster moustache in my favour as well. You can’t see it in the close-up, but my long curly hair is a match for James’ as well (at least for now). While I can’t remember specifics from the day the picture was taken, I’m confident my t-shirt was also nicer.

In James’ defence, he is a brilliant singer-songwriter with multiple albums under his belt. Me? I got nothin’. One unpublished novel and a bunch of music reviews.

How I Came to Know It: Just one of a number of James McMurtry albums that caught my attention earlier this year. To my shame, I think I ordered this one through Amazon. I try to shop locally, but occasionally I break down and conspire with convenience.

How It Stacks Up:  I have six James McMurtry albums. I don’t know them as well as I want to yet, making a final ranking difficult, but I know the top three, and “Childish Games” isn’t one of them. I’ll put it at #5 to give me some wiggle room for what’s left.

Ratings: 3 stars but almost 4

They say that country music is three chords and the truth. On “Childish Games” James McMurtry’s truth is filled with stark observation, quiet desperation and dreams gone to seed. It makes for an emotionally impactful record, but not a happy one.

McMurtry is a gifted storyteller, sometimes singing from a personal perspective, sometimes channeling through one of the many rough-edged characters he constructs.

It helps that he has such a great literary mind. The title track gets its title from 1 Corinthians 13. He uses the allusion to showcase the shift in our lives from youthful innocence to weary experience. The narrator begins the song believing in God, but not in ghosts, and ends with the reverse perspective.  

He is also a student of musical history. On “Slew Foot” he evokes Johnny Cash’s “Long Black Veil” with the familiar delivery of “…looked a lot like me” at the end of every chorus is clever without feeling strained. I didn’t love the song overall (it strays into corny in places) but it’s well constructed.

McMurtry also plays some solid guitar, and the blues-edge and liberal use of reverb puts some rock and roll balance against his country mosey. The rockabilly growl on “Old Part of Town” brings a little party jump to the record right where it’s needed.

The best track on the record though is the seven-minute opus to the death of the American dream, “We Can’t Make It Here Anymore.” If you ever want to understand the frustration of the lives of blue-collar folks eking out an existence in America’s rust belt, this is the song for you. There’re too many brilliant vignettes of misery to pick just one, so I’ll settle for the song’s summation:

“In Dayton Ohio or Portland Maine

Or a cotton gin out on the great high plains

That’s done closed down along with the school

And the hospital and the swimming pool

Dust devils dance in the noonday heat

There’s rats in the alley and trash in the street

Gang graffiti on a boxcar door

We can’t make it here anymore.”

“Memorial Day” is another standout, a demonstration of how McMurtry is a master of telling a narrative that is specific to one family’s holiday experience, but evocative of all. Like a master DJ, McMurtry has great landing lines that complete a melody, a rhyme and a stark truth. You can feel that last line coming like a train in the distance, and when it finally arrives it hits with full impact, like this:

“Daddy's in the big chair sippin' on a cold beer

Grandma's cuttin' a switch

She overheard Mary cussin' her brother

Called him a son of a bitch

She got a good green limb off a sweet gum sapling

Man that's bound to sting

“But Mary don't cry just stands there and takes it

Doesn't seem to feel a thing

No Mary don't cry, you know she's a big girl

Wonder what made her so mad

She takes those licks looking in through the den door

Staring right straight at her dad.”

The best part about these stanzas is how they tell half the story, and let your mind imagine the rest. I imagine there’s a whole host of complex relationships going on here, and more than a few secrets, but not even the sting of the switch is bringing it to light this Memorial Day.

For all of this brilliance, the album is a bit uneven in places. “See the Elephant” is supposed to capture childlike exuberance but it felt like a forced metaphor, and it doesn’t help it is the lead song on the record. “Holiday” is a great song, but it made for one too many ‘family gathering’ vignettes on a single album. I’d have saved this one for another record if I’d been in the control room.

Overall this is another James McMurtry classic. He won’t blow the doors off with his vocals, and he’s not pretty like some new country hunk, but he writes one hell of a story, and sings it in a way that makes you want to hear it multiple times over.

Best tracks: Childish Things, We Can’t Make It Here Anymore, Restless, Memorial Day, Old Part of Town