Vic Chesnutt and Mr & Mrs Keneipp
Merriment
[Backburner]
Rating: 8.9
Some artists are wedded to their geography. It would be unimaginable for
Sonic Youth to hail from Tulsa, and impossible for Oasis to reside in
Bakersfield. Even schlock like Marilyn Manson makes sense in the context
of originating from the moral void that is Miami. Athens, Georgia has
been Chesnutt's creative crucible for the past dozen years, and it makes a
lot of sense. His lyrics reflect his environment-- one that's equal parts
small-town charm and southern-weird.
The album Merriment is a collaboration in the Mermaid Avenue
sense. Chesnutt was happily bamboozled into singing and scribing words to
the already-extant music composed by Backburner Records honchos Kelly and
Nikki Keneipp. One suspects from the aural evidence that the work was done
with Chesnutt in mind all along, and was handed to him to put his indelible
and hand-carved stamp on it.
With a modicum effort, you can hear hints of Lennon, Chilton, Richman,
Black and even fellow Athenian Stipe in the lines and chord progressions.
But Merriment is more an example of archetypal songwriting than it
is derivative. The arrangements are streamlined and efficient, relying on
linear piano and acoustic guitar integers to serve as the dais upon which
Chesnutt showcases his gifts. And as always, whether on concept albums like
The Salesmen and Bernadette or in the honesty of his earlier work,
Chesnutt's warped wordcraft and hound-dog yodel take center stage.
The title track sets the tone at the start of the album. A treatise to
slapstick, "Merriment" carries itself with nobility, a majesty flaunting
an ambition to be Vaudeville's national anthem. The song declares in
closing: "Bless the idiot/ That makes us split a gut/ Roses for the butt of
all our merriment." Throughout the disc, the music itself doesn't vary enough
from its median to distract. Rather, it serves as a consistent segue
mechanism, linking the miniature narratives together. Other songs, such as
"Fissle," wax bizarre: "Carbon ends up caramelized/ In the perforated sky/
Fissle, every one." And "Smell the mighty monkey/ Trainer is a junkie/ And
the tightrope walker/ Has one foot in the grave" in "Mighty Monkey" are the
first brushstrokes of a portrait of a degenerate carnival.
You must realize by now that you've been tricked by Vic Chesnutt, the Br'er
Rabbit of folk music. He doesn't write songs, he writes short stories. In
Merriment, ghostly, dream-like images flit across your brain like
fingers across pages, orchestrated by Chesnutt's frail voice and sinister
lyricism. Chesnutt doesn't write songs, he directs and stars in film shorts:
brief vignettes of wintry, slow-motion nativities radiating holiness and
tableau dioramas of circus train wrecks. Vic doesn't write songs, he paints
crude, unnerving folk art-- scenes like the album cover in which a smirking
misshapen man with a bandaged head stands in the middle of a dirt country
lane holding 11 roses and a homemade sign.
-John Dark