Bad MonkeyX review: Vic Chesnutt: Left To His Own Devices

the blog experiment

Vic Chesnutt: Left To His Own Devices

Left to His Own Devices is Vic Chesnutt's first solo record since About to Choke (1997), and it follows it well: if The Salesman and Bernadette (1999, with Lambchop) buried his vocals, and Merriment (2000, with Mr. and Mrs. Keneipp) was a touch over-precise, this album gets it all back on track.

Like About to Choke, it's sloppy in some areas (mix, instrumentation) and precise in others: for Chesnutt, the songwriting is always the pocket, and his vocals and playing always augment the song idea. (I recommend you - all of you - see him live if you get a chance. He stays in the song so deeply, his guitar could fall off his lap and he'd just keep singing.) Most of the drumming on this album sounds like it was recorded next door in a tin house. Songs end abruptly, and occasionally meander in and out of other songs. The Casio keyboard experiment of Choke's "Little Vacation" continues here, in loops and drum-machine experiments ("Caper," "Thought You Were My Friend"), as does the variation between electric/acoustic and rough/sweet sound. It all sounds great.

Supposedly, this is a collection of unreleased stuff from over the years, but there's a surprising continuity to the record. Also strange is the absence of any of the many unreleased songs that were until recently available on Napster ("Everybody Can Change," "Styrofoam"). Three or four bars of "Mezzanine" show up in the trailing end of "Very Friendly Lighthouses," but that's it. Go figure.

Also like Choke, death seems the overarching theme here. "In Amongst the Millions" complains lightly about medical advances that make it so "people can't die anymore." "Look at Me," on the other hand, is a surprisingly cheerful song about making it to 40. The creepy "My Last Act" contains the best image I've heard in ages: an unhappy man goes into the garage and collects all of the Daddy Long Leg spiders he can. He takes them into his kitchen, and pulls the legs off all of them, so they "look like a bowl of black-eyed peas." He makes a drink of their Cuisinarted bodies and tequila. His last act: to drink it. Fuck.

Vic Chesnutt's truest gift, though, is his singing. Constantly refining and defining his soulful style, he goes to a couple of new places on Left to His Own Devices. His brilliant falsetto returns (I could listen to "Deadline" all day long), and a low, delayed voice takes the lead in "Twelve Johnnies." His rough caterwaul is contrasted with CSNY-worthy overlayed harmonies in "Distortion," forcing images of angels and the grim reaper singing together (possibly in Nightmare Before Christmas II).

If this kind of crazy shit appeals to you, get this, and while you're listening to it, read the poem on the inside sleeve: a list of places to be, of which these are only a few:

"...under a shady rose of sharon wearily leaning on a weathered concrete birdbath for balance, whilst looking at a damned fine dog named dickhead ... Chewing on the end of a paintbrush ... delightfully engaged in the discreet joy of pressed eyelids ... wandering distractedly through mosquito heaven, with one hand hidden in a grass basket ... poised to make a grand breakthrough, tugging on a nostril."

I am in awe. One thousand stars.