This eponymous album from New Yorican neo-folkster Langhorne Slim opens up with a simple melancholy cello line which turns into the ragged and rousing seaside stomp of “Spinning Compass”; authentic and irreverent in equal parts, it sets the standard for Langhorne Slim’s songwriting approach. Which, in a nutshell, involves taking straight folk music tropes and subverting them.
A hint of cheese and cheeky humour disguising something serious seems to be the order of the day. Langhorne Slim sings “Restless”, and it’s just the paean to the unfettered wanderer’s life that you’d expect, all simple fingerpicking and wistful lyrics. But underneath the surface lurks what sounds like honest bafflement - “I just don’t know what it is,” sings Slim, and you really feel he doesn’t know.
But nor does he sound like he’s going to let it bring him down too much. If you could reduce Langhorne Slim’s songs to a gesture, they’d be a rakish shrug combined with a turn of the shoulder as he heads off down the road. The world’s a crazy mystery, he seems to say, but that’s what makes it worth wandering around in.
If you’re on the hunt for musical virtuosity or rock-out heaviness, Langhorne Slim is not the droid you’re looking for. The album is mostly mellow (though hardly ever mopey), driven principally by simple folk guitar playing or piano with a supporting cast of accordions, strings, brass and who knows what else – all the sounds of your local roots club, essentially, minus the smugness and real ale fascism.
And there’s the thing – Langhorne Slim’s mission seems to be a good-time send-up of that oh-so-serious beard-strokin’ post-Dylan stuff. It’s like a subtle Muppet Show spoof, a satire with multiple layers of subtext, alternating between humour and insight … and in many ways I wish they’d gone a little easier on the instrumentation to let the lyrics shine through.
It’s Slim’s delivery that makes it work, though – from the sweet and (one assumes) feigned naivete of “Rebel Side Of Heaven” to the hipshakin’ organ wig-out of “Honeymoon”, via the straighter styles of rattle-trap country (“Tipping Point”) and mellow jangle of “Oh Honey”, it’s that ragged and broken young voice that pulls you past the simplicity of the tunes. It’s a tough style to trap on record, though, and I’d be willing to bet that Langhorne Slim is ten times more powerful seen live.
But hey, why worry about it? Langhorne Slim warns us about unrealistic expectations in “Diamonds And Gold” -
“you can have all the diamonds, and all the gold
but someday you’re still gonna get old
gotta learn to get happy along the way”
And you have to admit, the man has a point.
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Posted in Music reviews |
Tags: Americana, folk, Langhorne Slim
