ARTiST: Loudon Wainwright III
TiTLE: Strange Weirdos (Music From And Inspired By T
LABEL: Concord/Universal
GENRE: Folk
TiME: 48:15 min
SiZE: 57,2 MB
BiTRATE: VBRkbps
RiP DATE: Jun-02-2007
RELEASE DATE: Jun-04-2007
WEBSiTE: n/a
Track List:
01. Grey In L.A. 03:15
02. You Can't Fail Me Now 03:46
03. Daughter 03:34
04. Ypsilanti 01:53
05. So Much To Do 03:26
06. Valley Morning 03:44
07. X Or Y 02:55
08. Final Frontier 03:47
09. Feel So Good 02:04
10. Lullaby 03:12
11. Naomi 04:05
12. Doin' The Math 05:32
13. Strange Weirdos 04:08
14. Passion Play 02:54
Release Notes:
By all accounts, Knocked Up will be the funniest
movie of the year; director Judd Apatow and
co-writer and star Seth Rogen have already teamed up
on both Freaks and Geeks and The 40-Year-Old Virgin,
and the cast is stocked with a whole crapload of
other hilarious people.
Fitting, then, that the soundtrack is being provided
by Loudon Wainwright III, one of the great wiseasses
in American music. While he may not be as well-known
these days as his children Rufus and Martha, L-III
has been making strange hilarious twisted deep
folk-rock music since the early 1970s. Early albums
like Attempted Mustache are pretty much revered in
certain circles, but 2005Æs Here Come the Choppers
had a hell of a lot of bite to go with its bark.
This thing here is not really a ôsoundtrackö per se,
as none of the songs here exist in the movie except
in instrumental versions or over the closing
credits. But the whole thing feels pretty cinematic
anyway. These songs are hard-edged and soft-hearted,
happy and sad, hopeful and cynical, all at the same
time. They sound beautiful too, thanks to avant-pop
producer Joe Henry and a few well-placed special
guests (Richard Thompson here, Van Dyke Parks there,
etc.)
Take ôValley Morningö, for example. This perfectly
constructed composition gives us a narrator who may
or may not be Wainwright himself (IÆm guessing not),
just drinking coffee and watching his
upper-middle-class neighborhood wake up. He is
bemused by the illegal workers who will soon come to
make the whole place pretty; he is annoyed by the
neighbor kidÆs band; he is resigned to his governor
being ôan actor who speaks with an accentöùbut
although he is kind of a conservative
stick-in-the-mud, this narrator is still a decent
enough guy, the kind of guy youÆd like to drink
coffee with. This forms a perfect bookend with the
opener, ôGrey in L.A.ö, in which Wainwright exults
over how effed-up Los Angeles and its residents get
when it rains.
There are too many other great songs here to list,
but IÆm going to try. ôX or Yö is a rousing gospel
tune about the arbitrary binaries of gender and
genetics, and is my go-to choice for mixtapes these
days. (Extra kudos to Henry for making this sound as
fun and loose and celebratory as it needed to
sound.) ôDaughterö is a tear-jerker about his young
daughterùbut also maybe Martha?ùwith the most
sentimental/anti-sentimental lyrics of the year:
ôThatÆs my daughter in the water / Every time she
fell I caught her / Every time she fell / ThatÆs my
daughter in the water / I lost every time I fought
her / I lost every time.ö
Of course, this wouldnÆt be an L-III record without
some miserablism, and ôYou CanÆt Fail Me Nowö comes
through loud and clear on that score. The
desperation of our narrator is almost unbearable:
ôWeÆre taught to love the worst of us / And mercy
more than life, but trust me: / MercyÆs just a a
warning shot across the bow / I live for yours, and
you canÆt fail me now.ö His voice has lost none of
its power over the years, and gained a depth that
can be truly scary, as he shows on a savage new
version of his anti-lullaby ôLullabyö. The original
was written about Rufus, and is probably the ship
that launched a thousand therapy sessions: ôShut up
and count some sheep / And do me a favor donÆt bitch
in your sleep / No more agony, no more sorrow.ö And
ôFinal Frontierö is a spooky tune all about how
Loudon can never actually say the word ôlove,ö but
even here there is a huge punchline: ôThe number of
letters is four / Such a big deal should have many
more / Though ôGodö has just three / ThereÆs two in
the word ômeö / So I suppose less can be more.ö
But these are outliers here; there is more happy fun
stuff than on any other Wainwright record I can
think of. ôFeel So Goodö is a love song, no matter
how many cynical signifiers he throws in; ôSo Much
to Doö is another, with a Randy Newman vibe and a
hearty spirit: ôForget the past / WeÆre gonna debunk
it / ItÆs gonna last / Who woulda thunk it?ö And the
title track, which is all about how two losers find
answers to their problems in each other, is as true
as it is adorable.
An adorable Loudon Wainwright III record? Well, it
wouldnÆt be the first. But here itÆs done with such
style and panacheùand clear-eyed realismùthat the
songs stay with you long after they theoretically
should. This is kind of a staggering achievement up
in here.