- Release Info -------------------------------------------------------------- -
Artist: Chuck Prophet
Album: Temple Beautiful
Label: Yep Roc
Playtime: 42:38 min
Genre: Indie
URL: http://www.allmusic.com/album/temple-beautiful-r2379420/review
Rip date: 2012-02-05
Street date: 2012-02-07
Size: 77.26 MB
Type: Normal
Quality: 240 kbps / 4410Hz / Joint Stereo
- Release Notes ------------------------------------------------------------- -
Theme projects can be dicey propositions. For every successful one that
examines a subject in a song cycle, many more fail miserably as performers
strain and stretch lyrics to fit the matter at hand. Leave it to San
Francisco's Chuck Prophet to turn that generalization upside-down on his
twelfth studio release since the 1990 dissolution of Green on Red. This
concept set centers on his San Francisco hometown. The 12 tunes on Temple
Beautiful, named after an influential and long defunct S.F. punk club,
sometimes only obliquely reference the city. In fact, without Prophet's
song-by-song explanations in the press notes, it's often impossible to place
this rootsy, melodic rock & roll to any particular location. Still, Prophet
proudly declares that the album was "made in San Francisco, by San Franciscans
about San Francisco." Regardless, this is another in a remarkably consistent
series of terrific Prophet discs, filled with tightly wound blues-based rock,
driven by his unassuming talk-sung vocals and ever-present, always imaginative
Telecaster riffs. The dreamy trip-hop beats that once played a distinctive
part in Prophet's sound have been replaced by a tough four-piece augmented by
occasional horns, keyboards from producer Brad Jones, violin and cello, and
even a guest vocal from San Francisco's Roy Loney, founding member of, and
frontman for, the legendary Flamin' Groovies. The rather open-ended theme
namechecks everyone from world-renowned S. F. figures such as Willie Mays to
the far more obscure Emperor Norton, a British eccentric who moved there and a
figure only those from the area would likely recognize. The 1978 Harvey
Milk/George Moscone double homicide by Dan White is referenced in "White
Night, Big City," but even those lyrics are obtuse with neither of the
protagonist's names mentioned, although what sounds like found audio footage
from the subsequent White Night Riots is a subtle addition. Some of the
material least connected to the S.F. topic is the most successful. The lonely
souls that populate "The Museum of Broken Hearts" have only a tangential
relationship to AIDs, but the result is one of Prophet's most beautiful,
moving, and mournful ballads, helped enormously by a simple, somewhat
psychedelic elegiac violin that weaves throughout the chorus. The short '50s
pastiche with Stax-styled soul sax and wife Stephanie Finch (oddly M.I.A. on
many of these songs), "Little Girl, Little Boy" is a frisky antidote to some
of the songwriter's darker, skewed visions. The latter is exemplified by the
rocking and murderous "Who Shot John," another seemingly non-S.F. related
item. Ultimately, despite his loftier intentions, this works perfectly well as
another excellent Chuck Prophet collection that for most listeners only
marginally adheres to its stated concept but is no less impressive because of
that.
- Track List ---------------------------------------------------------------- -
01. Play That Song Again ( 2:43)
02. Castro Halloween ( 4:12)
03. Temple Beautiful ( 3:34)
04. Museum of Broken Hearts ( 3:56)
05. Willie Mays is Up at Bat ( 4:58)
06. The Left Hand & the Right Hand ( 3:45)
07. I Felt Like Jesus ( 2:57)
08. Who Shot John ( 3:47)
09. He Came From So Far Away (Red Man Speaks) ( 3:31)
10. Little Girl, Little Boy ( 2:08)
11. White Night, Big City ( 3:23)
12. Emperor Norton in the Last Year of His Life (1880) ( 3:44)
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