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Vic Chesnutt - At the Cut
| Pitchfork |
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Vic Chesnutt could rarely be accused of having a sunny disposition, but even considering that, his latest album features some truly harrowing material. On his latest LP, At the Cut, he is staring mortality in the eye, taking on existential themes with a pile of cultural references, and still working his mind around the nearly fatal accident that left him paraplegic on the verge of adulthood in 1983. As on 2007's North Star Deserter, Chesnutt is here joined by members of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and Thee Silver Mount Zion Memorial Orchestra, as well as Fugazi's Guy Picciotto. Together they build a sound that walks a line between country-folk, Southern soul, and post-rock, which works because the music's uncertainty about its identity often mirrors Chesnutt's own doubt. Opener "Coward" deals in dread and aggression with its crawling tempo and doom-laden, harmonized guitar outbursts. When Chesnutt's ragged voice shreds the phrase, "I am a coward," in a long, agonized shout, it's not an admission-- it's a threat. It's frightening, bombastic, and a bit messy, and it's a good announcement for an intermittently foreboding album that occasionally drags a bit. The title of "It Is What It Is" adopts an annoying phrase as a pathway to Chesnutt's accepting not only his own flaws and inconsistencies but also whatever comes after death. The song references Victor Hugo, Shakespeare, Kafka, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Henry Darger, and W.H. Auden, and culminates in a wickedly incisive rejection of religion ("I don't need stone altars to help me hedge my bet against the looming blackness"). Not every track has quite so much to say-- the lyrics of "Philip Guston" are quite minimal, serving as a bit of seasoning for a broken-down violin and guitar jam, while the affecting closer, "Granny", is built around a simple, quiet reminiscence about Chesnutt's grandmother making pimiento cheese at the kitchen sink....full text |
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| Bbc |
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For a man who recently described his relationship with America as being one centred around the love/hate axis with a bit of Stockholm syndrome thrown in, Vic Chesnutt seems in no hurry to give up on his continual, arresting grapple with these themes on this, the 13th album of his career. At the Cut sees Vic engaging in head-on battles with alienation, isolation and human failings of the body and heart, though before a more abrasive, less folksy backdrop than previous offerings. Those soporific elements, however thickly laced with unsettlement, are prefixed barely a minute into the opening track Coward. Here, the atmosphere, brooding and intense, swirls, lilts, fades and then erupts into savage stings of violence. A typically cantankerous lyrical stab at notions of the true nature of heroism (“submissive dogs can lash out in fear”), Chesnutt’s voice transcends from a whispering lone woodsman to an almost banshee-esque wail of malevolence. The listening experience is akin to sitting in a collapsing wood cabin in the wilderness of Chesnutt’s home state of Georgia as a humdinger of a storm crashes into its heavy oak door, then retreats, unidentified, into the night. Lyrical adroitness is one of Chesnutt’s trademarks and perhaps goes some way to explaining how he has previously managed to work with the likes of Michael Stipe, Jonathan Richman and Kurt Wagner of Lambchop. On the more harmonic tracks that make up the latter part of the album, none are more laced with Chesnutt’s uneasy realisation of mortality than Flirted with You All My Life: organs and guitars groan and flutter with a country twang while Chesnutt implores, “Death, I’m not ready / o’ death you hector me”....full text |
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| Wordpress |
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What exactly is so special about a chinaberry tree, that chopping it down should be such a dreadful, cataclysmic event? I have no idea, but hearing Vic Chesnutt narrate the saga of destruction in the garden is one of the most unsettling things I’ve heard this year, a spartan tale told in lean, precise language that just barely contains the violence circulating just beneath the surface. It’s quintessential Chesnutt on a number of levels, its carefully-controlled dynamics betraying the trained ear of a veteran musician, its sinister use of gothic archetypes suggesting a life-long Southerner who’s fully internalized the literary heritage of his home land. If you think that’s heady praise for a musician most have never heard of, you’d be right. Though he was championed (and produced) by Michael Stipe in the 1980s, Chesnutt is an artist whose work has always been too bound to traditional songcraft to make him an indie rock star, and too concerned with atmosphere to fit in with iconoclasts like Tom Waits or Nick Cave. But if he never became a star, he’s always been a cult favorite and a steadily-working musician, quieting amassing a body of work that’s remarkably consistent, if dogged in its pursuit of a very narrow vision and aesthetic. In a recording career that’s devoid of clunkers but also light on real standouts, new record At the Cut is as potent as anything Chesnutt has cut– not a departure from his familiar sound by any means, but arguably its most effective manifestation. And why wouldn’t it be? The album finds Chesnutt reuniting with producer Guy Picciotto and musicians from Silver Mt. Zion Orchestra, the same cast of collaborators who worked with Chesnutt on North Star Deserter, an album treasured by many fans as his best work. But Chesnutt is not an opportunist: He simply understands the importance of great group chemistry, which this ensemble has in spades, and it breathes life into this batch of Chesnutt originals, all of them evocative and generally unsettling....full text |
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