PrettyFakes

Silver Jews. Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea. Drag City, 2008.

Imagine 1970s country radio as a gaudy carnival midway. Late 70s, early 80s: the era in which someone decided the countrypolitan sound just wasn’t boring enough, dammit. It’s not even really a carnival. It’s a Thomas Kinkade painting of a carnival. Maybe Kenny Rogers is selling chicken on a stick and getting a bright idea. There’s a long line for the mechanical bull ride.

Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea is a field recording of the music the carnies and sideshow acts make in their trailers when the ferris wheels have coasted to a halt and the tents have been struck into lumps of musty canvas: It’s party music, a perverse and unscrupulous and (this is the tricky party) affectionate distortion of the cotton candy and taffy and the modest thrills and throbs the fair is pushing to the rubes.* Affectionate, I say, because the album is not averse to the smooth and sweet nor to playing it straight. In fact, I’m pretty sure the guitar intro for album closer “We Could Be Looking for the Same Thing” is lifted straight from an imaginary Janie Fricke song. There are sonic sequins coming out of the carnival PA by the identical thousands, but Lookout Mountain has found the package of manufacturer’s rejects and is pasting them on its naked body. They still sparkle, though.

Lookout Mountain remembers the Old Weird America and it used to have Harry Smith’s phone number written down somewhere. More importantly, it remembers not to treat anything with particular reverence.** These songs run on their own deadpan dream-logic. They are populated with anthropomorphized jukeboxes and talking squirrels and a waitress with a bad lard jones. “Candy Jail” could be an apocryphal sequel to “Big Rock Candy Mountain“.

Mainly, though, I keep coming back to “Party Barge.” It sounds like what might result if Jimmy Buffet were to marinate Kenny Chesney in mescaline and peyote before grilling him on a spit and inviting the Hawks over for dinner and an impromptu jam session. Everyone would wake up with blood on their hands, strangely distended bellies, a feeling of intense but ambiguous satisfaction, and no memory of what happened the night before. But you! You left the tape running, and now we have “Party Barge” as a lovely souvenir and summertime staple for years to come.

MP3: Silver Jews—“Party Barge”

Previous PF love for the SJs: On Tanglewood Numbers and “K-Hole”
Listen to more Silver Jews on MySpace.
New York interview with David Berman.
Baton Rouge music writer Alex V. Cook’s review.

*Yes, yes, Bakersfield/Outlaw etc etc—just go with me here.

**Oh! You might be saying. Like Greatest Palace Music! No. Not like Greatest Palace Music.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 23rd, 2008 at 5:48 am and is filed under Professor Fury, The Rock and The Roll. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.