FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1999. All Rights Reserved
| CD Review by Mary-Lynn McEwen JOE HENRY • Latest release from one of the members of the informal songwriter’s cartel that includes Gillian Welch, Jakob Dylan of the Wallflowers, and Phil Cody. The floor is your friend, especially if you’re usually on your way to visit it. With an album cover that not too subtly shows a monkey on his back, Henry uses his floor allusions – a dominant metaphor on his previous album Trampoline – to continue defining the mental corner into which he’s painted himself. His lazy, spacey songs flow like milk from the teat of the universe, milk that squirts into a bucket a little too close to the ass end of the cow, milk in danger of contamination from shit and straw, milk that you’d suckle in the sleepy cotton brains of the infancy of your demise. For Henry’s language, his themes, his songs, are the stuff of infancy, of our most basic needs. The meaty metaphors are basted in desire, longing glances in the mirror to see over your shoulder at what might have been, hesitant drive-bys past the alleyway of the past, knowing that there’s a police report in your future if you dare venture there again. And from that alleyway ambles a liquid Hammond organ to quench the thirst of the quivering, simple guitars. From that alleyway shuffles four-on-the-floor drums to command the drill squad that marches your heart to the gallows. From that alley, a torch – but to guide you or to burn you... well, come closer and the monkey will whisper it in your ear. Or take a bite. 5/5 |
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