Date: Thu, 06 Apr 2000 04:37:56 -0700 From: clark price Reply-To: drywall@primenet.com Organization: SR dis-information X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.61 (Macintosh; I; PPC) Subject: Stan Ridgway UK Review THIS WEEKS ALBUM RELEASES in the UK REVIEWED BY ANDY GILL THE UK LONDON INDEPENDENT / 3rd of MARCH STAN RIDGWAY : "ANATOMY" / NEW WEST RECORDS ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- DESPITE NOT having an album released in the UK for far too many years now, Stan Ridgway remains one of America's best songwriters, a Dirty Realist storyteller whose observations of the sad, soft, underbelly of the American Dream unerringly focus in on the moments when hope sours into resignation, and idealisim into cynicism. His tales of little loser lives are characterised by a Jim Thompson world of grifters, carnies, and lowlifes making do and screwing up. their dropped stitches sketched in telling phrases that leave more questions begged than answered, as Ridgway employs straegies of concealment and revelation to keep the listener constantly revising their understanding of events. But however much is revealed, the mystery remains. What exacty do his characters want? What is their state of mind? What are their intentions? Most of the time, you don't really want to know: the protagonist of "Valarie is Sleeping", for instance, ponders what do do now he's disposed of poor Valaries's corspe, while the numbed soul of "Deep Blue Polkadot" seeks more extreme sensation to fend off anomie, musing that "Beauty in decay can be the only way / When you are not". The influence of such as Raymonfd Carver and Jim Thompson can be readily dicerned in Ridgway's writing, though the quiirky detail, wry humour, and odd narrative twists are, if anything, more characteristic of the Cohen Brother's films. And indeed, the sleeve design - a pastiche of designer Saul Bass's stylised credit sequence for Otto Premiger's ":Anatomy of a Murder" - gives clear indication of the cinematic sensibility which Ridgway brings to his lyrics and his music. Like Ennio Morricone, he has a good ear for the "visual" qualities of instruments, combining them in narratively pleasing arrangments which proceed by mood and texture as much as by melody: a whine of lonesome harmonica, a cold shiver of synthesised strings, a smattering of meloncholy Euro-cinematic piano. It's a versatile, flexible method which enables Stan Ridgway to come closer than otherwise possible to the heart of a song such as "Train of Thought", a deeply moving evocation of the limitations of memory: " All the world and history / Burns like a bad sign / And here within my reach revealed / The clouds part in my mind / I see the love that I sought / But then I lost my train of thought ". Wherever you stand on the great Keats / Dylan debate, that's sheer poetry. ANDY GILL / THE UK INDEPENDENT 3/3/2000 http://www.stanridgway.com http://www.primenet.com/~drywall/ STAN RIDGWAY "ANATOMY" / New West Records NW 6010 ==================================