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The problem with the phrases “angry young
man” and “pub rock,” both of which seem to be mandatory
in any discussion of Graham Parker, is not that they’re obsolete but
instead that they’re meaningless. “Pub rock” was stupid
from the outset, a tautological catch-all for the sort of music you might
hear in English pubs during the mid-’70s, when Parker was beginning
to make a name for himself. “Angry young man” was even dumber:
Sure, Parker was young and often angry (he influenced the famously bilious
Elvis Costello, as well as several founders of the British punk scene), but
he wasn’t stuck on apoplectic. A devotee of American soul and
R&B, Parker could also be melancholy, hopeful, and tender; his best
songs pingponged from lacerating to loving and back again in the space of
one snappy couplet. Over a career that has endured more than 30 years, the
ridiculously prolific 56-year-old singer/songwriter has addressed the full
range of human emotions, in all of their infinite conjunctions and
irreducible complexity. No wonder he hasn’t run out of things to say.
Don’t Tell Columbus, Parker’s fourth full-length for the Chicago-based
Bloodshot label, is dense with pop hooks and passionate ambivalence —
trademark Parker, in other words. And make no mistake: It’s very much
his album. Although Ryan Barnum handles keyboards and loyal co-conspirator
Mike Gent (also of the Figgs, a great band in its own right) takes care of
drums, backing vocals, and the occasional guitar lead, Parker plays almost
everything else, from lap-steel guitar to kazoo. A mixture of anthemic
folk-rock and rawboned R&B, the songs have a slippery, expansive
quality, a tendency to unfurl in unexpected ways. The moody midtempo rocker
“England’s Latest Clown” at first seems to be about
British tabloid target Pete Doherty, but, in typical Parker fashion, the
subject of the satire isn’t quite so clear-cut. Toward the end of the
song, Parker’s pitiless lens pans out to expose the greater absurdity:
“We want to see him strung out, we want to see him thin/We want to
see somebody dig a hole and bury him. . . . /We wish he was dead already,
and we wish we were him.”
Other tracks blur the line between the personal and
the universal. The eight-minute epic “The Other Side of the
Reservoir” is both an elegy for a drowned meadow and an unwritten
letter to an ex-lover. In “Suspension Bridge,” a sinewy
minor-key ballad with a vaguely Middle Eastern feel, Parker jumps from a
pleasant childhood memory of standing on a bridge with his father to a
meditation on mortality and our essential solitude: “Not in one world
or another,” he sings. “I’ve got no sister, and
I’ve got no brother.” “Bullet of Redemption,” one
of several overtly Dylanesque tracks on the album, is a lovely paradox, one
part curse and one part benediction. Like all the best metaphors, the
titular bullet can’t be explained away; it misses its mark,
ricochets, scatters signifiers like buckshot. Of course, there’s more than enough acrimony to
maintain Parker’s angry-young-man credentials. The sardonic
sing-along “Ambiguous” lampoons the apathetic American
electorate, and the snarling blues-shuffle “Stick to the Plan”
takes on everything from global-warming deniers to the war on terror. The
surf-rock seether “Love or Delusion,” a kind of anti-love song,
describes “a system so advanced that it runs on blood and works by
chance.” But the vitriol is tempered by “Somebody Saved
Me” and “All Being Well,” two unapologetically romantic
songs whose sweetness squelches any lingering traces of acid. Maybe Parker
deserves a more accurate title after all these years. How about
“brilliantly conflicted geezer”? Contact René Spencer Saller at
rssaller@core.com.
This article appears in Mar 29 – Apr 4, 2007.
