Artist: Ward White
Album: Done With the Talking Cure
Bitrate: 231kbps avg
Quality: EAC Secure Mode / LAME 3.98.4 / -V0 / 44.100Khz
Label: CD Baby
Genre: Indie
Size: 56.72 megs
PlayTime: 0h 32min 29sec total
Rip Date: 2011-09-16
Store Date: 2011-03-29
Track List:
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01. Done With the Talking Cure 2:45
02. Change Your Clothes 3:24
03. Radio Silence 3:27
04. We Can't Go on Like This 3:56
05. Accomplice 3:10
06. Be Like Me 2:51
07. Pretty, Ugly Town 2:29
08. 1964 2:35
09. Who's Sorry Now? 2:44
10. Family Dog 2:13
11. The Matchbox Sign 2:55
Release Notes:
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Since the mid-zeros, Brooklyn songwriter Ward White has quietly and methodically
been putting out brilliantly lyrical rock albums. An incisive lead guitarist and
nimbly melodic bass player, heÆs made some waves lately, touring with Wreckless
Eric and Amy Rigby and getting some long-overdue NPR exposure. His new album
Done with the Talking Cure is brutally hilarious, and may be his best one yet.
ItÆs definitely his most diverse: although itÆs got his hardest-rocking songs û
heÆs never played better, handling all the guitars and the bass here û itÆs also
his most surreal and mysterious. Claudia ChopekÆs string arrangements are pure
genius: theyÆre lush yet completely unpredictable, a perfect fit with the songsÆ
devious twists and turns. And yet, this is WhiteÆs most direct album, most of
the songs here clocking in at less than three minutes. White handles all the
vocals as well, with lots of harmonies, airing out his Jeff Buckley-esque upper
register. Behind him, Joe McGinty (with whom he made a terrific psychedelic pop
album in 2009) plays keys, along with ChopekÆs violin and viola, Julia KentÆs
cello and Eddie ZwiebackÆs drums.
The understatedly uneasy title track kicks off with a fluid Taxman bass riff,
its narrator eager to jump back into the fray since his ôarms were Gregor
SamsaÆd to insect feelers overnight.ö The first of several sweepingly
orchestrated numbers, Change Your Clothes paints a surreal wee-hours scenario:
its sarcasm barely held in check, it may be the most genteel song ever written
about wanting to crawl out a window in the middle of the night. Radio Silence is
an absolutely spot-on sendup of WASP uptightness set to a delicious backbeat pop
tune: ôItÆs really not a compromise til everybodyÆs miserable/But zeroÆs not
divisible,ö White laments. ôItÆs a tragic disease, the kind that keeps you well
and never sick.ö
The strings sweep in again on We CanÆt Go on Like This, a richly allusive,
barely restrained exasperation anthem with Jimmy Webb touches. Then White brings
back the backbeat with Accomplice, something akin to Luke Haines with a
Connecticut accent, complete with a creepy circus bridge straight out of Black
Box Recorder. White has been called a ômusical John Cheever,ö a comparison that
strikes home in the cruelly sardonic, string-driven Be Like Me (as in ôDisgusted
with the way things are, embarrassed by how they were and frightened about how
theyÆll beö). He drops the allusions and goes straight for the jugular with the
irresistibly funny/harsh Pretty/Ugly Town, a kiss-off to a trendy girl who will
do anything to ôsucceed.ö Then he brings them back in full force with 1964, an
equally amusing anti-trendoid broadside disguised as a sweet bouncy pop song
utilizing every vintage keyboard in the Joe McGinty museum.
WhoÆs Sorry Now perfectly captures a morose, drugged-out ambience, WhiteÆs voice
drowning in watery Leslie speaker waves: ôI always drink to forget, I wish I
could forget to drink more oftenàgot all this time to kill before I take my
pill, and the medicine has all the fun.ö The album closes with Family Dog, sort
of the anti-Weezy as dog metaphors go, and The Matchbox Sign, pulsing along on a
Wilson Pickett bassline anchoring another of those detail-packed mystery stories
he writes so well. What else is there to say: the songs speak for themselves.
Another masterpiece from a songwriter who will someday û if there is a someday û
be pantheonic. YouÆll see this high on our list of the best albums of the year
when we finally get around to putting it up.