Vic Chesnutt: About to Choke

"Granted, I'm off today. I keep a good neurotic's calendar, and it's three years, to the day, since Seymour killed himself. Did I ever tell you what happened when I went down to Florida to bring back the body? I wept like a slob for five solid hours.

...About five minutes before the plane landed, I became aware of people talking in the seat behind me. A woman was saying, with all of Back Bay Boston and most of Harvard Square in her voice, '...and the next morning, mind you, they took a pint of pus out of that lovely young body of hers.'

That's all I remember hearing, but when I got off the plane a few minutes later and the Bereaved Widow came toward me in Bergdorf Goodman black, I had the Wrong Expression on my face. I was grinning. Which is exactly the way I feel today, for no really good reason.

Against my better judgement, I feel certain that somewhere very near here -- the first house down the road, maybe -- there's a good poet dying, but also somewhere very near here somebody's having a hilarious pint of pus taken from her lovely young body, and I can't be running back and forth forever between grief and high delight."

From Franny and Zooey (J.D. Salinger)

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One could easily refer to any of Vic Chesnutt's records as "Overlooked" Genius. His uniqueness doesn't mesh well with the pedestrian airwaves at all, and he's clearly never trying for the mainstream. But his fans are deep fans, and among musicians Vic is, says Michael Stipe, "cherry pie."

But this recording, from 1996, is overlooked even for Vic. It followed on the heels of the Sweet Relief II project and all the press that that made available, but was virtually ignored. The album following this one, The Salesman and Bernadette, received an inordinate amount of press comparatively, and Choke was mentioned in parentheses, if at all. About to Choke is perceived to be, from what I can tell, a hiccup in Chesnutt's career, when it really is the gas: if you trace the Vic solo material, Choke follows the spirit of West of Rome and Drunk more than it does the polished Is the Actor Happy; and its follow-up didn't arrive until 2001, with Left to His Own Devices, after several collaborative projects. Even Chesnutt has disparaged this album at times. I don't know why.

About to Choke is, for the record however, one of Chesnutt's best records, and my easy hands down best album of the 90s. Released in 96, while the best efforts of rock music were being diluted and perverted on the radio, Choke stays true to the themes and emotions of the best early 90s music, and tops the efforts of his peers. REM's fantastic Automatic for the People theorized about the beauty of death; About to Choke describes it from up close. Cobain's anguish was heavy and moving; Chesnutt's is, well, truly sad, but in such a beautiful way.

	Winter dead that was buried 'neath the pole-beans
	Behold! A sink-hole in the spring!
		- Degenerate

Chesnutt is an amazing master of vocabulary and sensory engagement (I suppose we call that a poet?); his imagery is stunning, over and over again. "Your brain feels like a fiddle," he sings in "Giant Sands," "a brittle, fragile vessel." His hopes for better things are spelled out in "Little Vacation," a plea for a better way of fighting:

	Like a scenic vista
	Like a long awaited chemical buzz
	Like a far off twister
	Like an unexpected pleasant run-in with the fuzz

He suggests that Robert's rules of order be employed in his domestic quarrel: we could be happy, he says, and still solve this. "I'll be the parliamentarian," he promises, "With an unswerving dedication."

Chesnutt may be the only singer who can use the word "proclivity" next to the word "motherfuckin'" and have it sound natural. He's dead funny in a Salinger way, a way that doesn't demand that happiness come before joy. "This album," he says in his brief liner notes,

"is dedicated to all the good folks that sent me letters and 
never got a single response, like those that wrote me to say 
'don't die' and those that wanted to know who is Danny Carlisle,
Steve Willoughby and Bill Lowery [characters in songs] and those
that wanted to know if Tina was my sister or if we just had
the same last name [they're married], and those that wanted to 
know what 'booted up' meant and those that could never find my 
old albums..." 

He then leaves his address. He's not going to write back, and he's not going to answer the questions, whether they're good ones or stupid ones. But you can write him: knock yourself out, he seems to be saying. Go nuts.

The album-opener, "Myrtle," is a deadly song, brutal and whimsical at the same time. A solo piece with overdubs, it seems to have been engineered to place the accompanying piano's harmonies and complements over the main guitar in the mix, so that we wind up hearing what sounds like the song's ghost. A series of whimsical images (a funny pilgrim, a saucy Chaucer, a sorry chapter mislaid) leads abruptly into a confession: the singer has

	Whittled with an exacto knife
	Plumb right through my load bearing wall

He's sorry now -- horrified, actually -- but something compelled him. A singer, or some chimes, calling up thoughts of Manson and Joan of Arc, something pushed him, because

	If I gave in
	It had to of been

As the piano and guitar trade places and the song becomes more corporeal, he expounds on his philosophy, perhaps to let us know where he was coming from when he was moved by whatever spirit to commit whatever crime:

	I'm not an optimist
	I'm not a realist
	I might be a subrealist but I can't substantiate

Still, it happened. The album's best image follows, one of peaceful, pastoral helplessness, and then the song is over: "It was bigger than me," he pleads,

	And I felt like a sick child
	Dragged by a donkey
	Through the myrtle

Sigh. Okay.

The silence is followed by a sound-fx tape warming up and beginning: birds chirp, crickets creak, and we're in New Town, America. It reeks of lumber and promise ("beat the crowds!") and discovery. It's a friendly tribute to beginnings, but Chesnutt, from his vantage point in the Old Town, can't resist throwing out some sad wisdom:

	A little bitty baby draws a nice clean breath
	From over his beaming momma's shoulder
	He's staring at the worldly wonders that stretch just as far as he can see
	But he'll stop staring when he's older

"Ladle" howls with unrequited lust, and features a great, screaming guitar solo by Alec McManus. "Tarragon" and "Swelters," both pretty as hell, are comforting and gentle, but the ideas in them maintain the album's theme: "After it's spent," Chesnutt sings in the lullabye-ish "Swelters," "you're rarely glad it went." "(It's No Secret) Satisfaction" is a crazy instrumental on a Yamaha Portasound and a Casio, cheap sounds that remind me of department-store demos. It works, and it is the Portasound that backs the vocal on "Little Vacation," into which "Satisfaction" leads. The four-song respite from existential angst is finished: the rest of the record shares the tone of "Myrtle."

"Degenerate" is a tribute to the phenomenon:

	I am a rough ball of twine
	I had a duty to do
	I been tied to the table
	But now I am frazzled and aloof: 
	Degenerate - disintegrate the tight knots...
	Rot away those nooses...
	Out come those tangles

"Hot Seat," a highlight of what would have once been Side 2 of the album, relays the experience of an overdose in stunning detail, not without its lightness:

	Ventolin and Vivarin and Primatene
	Secret tequila shots and a patch of morphine
	In mourning and in the throes
	What a great day to come out of a coma

"Giant Sands" is an anthemic story of receiving bad news via phonebooth while on the road. The double-edged convenience of communication is compared with "Tupperware, shipped with sarcasm." Back in the cabin-cruiser, the driver jokes about the news ("'At least it's not a leg break,' You laugh out loud and lonesome") and then, overcome, pulls over to the side of the road. Heavy distortion, feedback, choral harmonies, and a free-floating guitar solo all crash abruptly into an ending, while a tiny, high vocal "oooh" leaves the issue as unresolved as it really is. This leads into the guant "Threads," and if you're not already lying on the carpet, stoned, you may want to consider it now. A companion to "Disintegrate" in a Zeppelin-y 70s minor key funereal tempo mode, "Threads" mourns the passage of youth, obliquely: "Hard brown bread cut with a circular saw/ Shallow rattling breath with a wee cough." Consumptive beauty. Love Theme from the Black Death. And then silence.

"See You Around" closes the record. Possibly overblown with four guitars strumming anxiously in unison, it is a final conversation before a breakup. Mean things are said, ambivalence is identified and shot dead.

	...as you make your advances so clumsily
	I'll save us both the hassle and leave
	And hang out all night in the flourescent light 
	Of Dunkin' Donuts
	Cause I ain't got time for the niceties
	Or rather, I was never fond of the niceties 

Chesnutt had apparently been performing this concert favourite for years when he recorded this, which possibly explains why the strumming is so damned earnest. It also allows for the fine singing of the chorus, in which every note is played for all it's worth: the phrase "I will see you around" is sung again and again, with anger, sadness, longing -- all of the breakup emotions, framed in a bitter offhandness.

A brief reprise of "Myrtle" finishes the record, way back and echo-ey. The philosophical verse ("I'm not an optimist...") is cut off by someone slamming down the lid on the piano keys. Bang.

One has to have a certain sensibility to hear a description of something like this and go, "Hey, I have to hear that!" But there it is, and there are people who do little happy dances when someone describes sad things with dignity, without self-pity or nihilistic abandon. Chesnutt excels at that, like Salinger did. Dig it. ((((())))))

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Vic Chesnutt: About to Choke. Capitol Records, 1996.
Review by jep clayton, BadMonkeyX. 6th issue, July 2002.

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