Robert Christgau's Music Criticism Blog - Expert Witness - MSN Music

Tommy Womack

No, Not That Womack & Womack

By Xgau Mar 23, 2012 2:02AM

Tommy Womack: There, I Said It! (Cedar Creek '07)

Rising from the icky depths of the lyrically, vocally, and harmonically abject "A Songwriter's Prayer," a 40-year-old Nashville lifer finds solace in a forgotten WTF he wrote at 28 and by age 44 comes up with a bunch of new ones about bad jobs, fluorescent lighting, and low-grade cigarette, beer, and Xanax dependency. The climax would be the proud admission "I'm Never Gonna Be a Rock Star" except that the climax is the seven-minute must-hear "Alpha Male & the Canine Mystery Blood," a world-historically unromantic rocker about rock after 40. Also crucial is "Nice Day," about his boy and his wife and a friend's swimming pool. It won a prize. A MINUS

 

Tommy Womack: Now What! (Cedar Creek)

Reflective without wallowing in might-have-beens, his nasal drawl weary and at ease with itself, he's an established failure who's calmed down considerably for a pimple on Dylan's ass who believes the best thing about ADD is that it never bothers you too long. "90 Miles an Hour on a Dead End Street" is no advertisement for chianti just as "Pot Head Blues" is no advertisement for cannabis. In one strong song, he feels the heat of an old flame on a checkout line and is so glad the burns have healed. In several other strong songs, he pitches woo wifeward. A MINUS

 

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120Comments
Mark926
Mar 25, 2012 7:54PM
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Hello, to add to Dan's question on what records I still turn to in spite of the digital options. The classics that were analog to begin with...I have the Beatles on CD, digital, mono, stereo, you name it and yet I still yank the records off the shelf when I want to hear them clicks, pops and all. Abbey Road needs to be heard on vinyl. No CD captures the bottom end of that record like the vinyl does..IHO. Ditto for Born To Run. My copy of that album is well worn and yet I rarely pull the CD off the shelf. I don't even own any Zeppelin on CD or digital. CCR, Hendrix, Floyd, Marley. Jazz goes vinyl for sure if I have the option. But records can be a pain in the a$$. They attract dust like crazy. Static. They are easily damaged. You need a fairly good rig to get the most out of the medium. It's certainly not plug and play nor portable and modern recordings are less night and day. The whole "vinyl sounds better" is partly a consumer hook. My ipod sounds pretty damn great running through my amp and so do CDs. That said, on Record Store Day I have my eye on the releases of Hell On Heels and especially Funeral Dress on the black circles

Duke.
Mar 25, 2012 7:35PM
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Of the four songs which Christgau calls out on All Eternals Deck, the two which take the palm are "Estate Sale Sign" and "Beautiful Gas Mask". There is much to be said about either, but for the moment I'll point out an oddity shown clearly in the latter. For a man who allows as much inconsistency in his arrangements as Darnielle, you'd think he wouldn't be half so dynamic, or versatile, in inculcating styles within a style. When I hear "Beautiful Gas Mask" begin, and when I hear it slip the yoke of its middle, and when it coasts outward and down, I can never shake the sense that I'm listening to the Smiths song I always hear in my mind when I go looking for Louder Than Bombs, but never turns out to be there.

If I were as good as Darnielle at that, and I were as good as him at "Lovecraft in Brooklyn", I wouldn't know why I wasn't that good more often. Since I'm nowhere near as good as him at anything he does, I can only speculate that his aural failures begin in verbal ones, rather than doing what is easily done and simplifying the question by thinking him a shoddy melodist. If you line up his albums and knock them back one after the other, you get a dull opiate of curious, rich language which is only surprising when its context is music he didn't write.

His tropes, his emotionality, even his phrasing come across as tactics when their essential use evolves so little, repeats so often, and always finds itself doing the same job it was hired to do last time around. What makes this problematic is the fact that he doesn't stop writing great songs, not for a minute, and on those great songs we do not find great lyrics which somehow managed to get in bed with great music, but great music which is imbued with the spirit of a great lyric. Whatever problems Darnielle has in making music, which as problems go are probably not colossal but hardly to be winked at, they are rooted in the substance of his diction, or the diction of his substance, if you see what I mean.

In order to be sure of what I'm saying, here, and to be sure I mean it, I would have to sit down with his lyric books and read through them, looking out for the songs I love and the ones I don't, weighing and balancing them as words, and divorcing them from their music, to imagine them as the core of something more general, and to imagine what kind of something they could sustain. After my expedition I'll come back and publish my findings in the Do-Nothing Weekly, under the heading: "Where Do We Fail?: El Dorado & The Men It Took With It", with an enlarged second printing in the more scholarly Hoopla and Falderal, going by the more straightforward "The Origins of Failure".
Kurt
Mar 25, 2012 7:26PM
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While I'm not definitely not opposed to digital music formats and in fact, much of my music collection is stored that way, I have a strange attachment to CDs and vinyl. It might be a purely emotional thing, but I feel like I own the music more if I have it in a physical form. I can't really explain that, I just know that buying mp3s doesn't have quite the same appeal to me as going out and buying music on CD/vinyl.
Jason Gubbels
Mar 25, 2012 5:20PM
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Recently started relistening to Glen Campbell
I go back and forth with Campbell. Here he is with Stevie Wonder, Feb. 1969. 

http://tinyurl.com/7​lp8xdx
PhilB220
Mar 25, 2012 4:47PM
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Recently started relistening to Glen Campbell because he's in the news and I had never really taken him seriously before, even though "Wichita Lineman" has always been way up there in my mind as one of pop's most indelible pieces of songwriting and Campbell's version is the best. Listening to the guitar lines on his singles reminded of a story I once heard from the sax player Jim Horn back in the 70s. He said in the 60s when Campbell was a session guitarist, and before he became famous as a singer and solo artist, all the other L.A. studio hacks used to make fun of his Southern accent and corny demeanor, making jokes behind his back about living on the farm and having carnal knowledge with cows, that sort of thing. He said it was a normal reaction among that jaded lot, who were ridiculously competitive, whenever they encountered someone with genuine native talent but who wasn't really aware of it. 
Christopher Monsen (Chris Monsen)
Mar 25, 2012 3:30PM
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Speaking of vinyl to digital conversions - here's a question for Witnesses: which pieces of vinyl keep drawing you back despite having the digital version? And for what reason? Sound quality? Emotion? 
Plenty. And it doesn't have as much to do with sound quality these days as to do with the act of playing records and listening to music, as well as the wish to have and maintain a physical, tangible library. And then there's cover art, liner notes, lyric sheets.

Putting on physical record is also likely to color your listening process in certain ways, since you have to do more than search and press play. Even more so playing vinyl; dust jacket, cover, placing it on the turn table, dropping the needle, getting up to change sides (unless you have a fancy Bang & Olufsen player). I like listening to music that way, especially when I want to listen to a record I know and love.

That said, I have no problem maintaing focus listening digital files - reviewing records being part of how I make my income, these days digital is quite often all that's made available to you. It'd be unprofessional of me to allow my concentration to wane, not to mention detrimental to my listening pleasures (and sometimes dis-pleasures).

BTW, I believe there was an episode of Stanford's Entitled Opinions podcast that discussed vinyl and the listening process, but alas I can't find it at the moment.
Greg Morton (GMort)
Mar 25, 2012 3:16PM
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John S./Kenny/Anybody else I've forgotten: Wife and I just got tickets for Todd Snider at The Triple Door in Seattle for Friday, April 20th. Neither of us have to work that day so we'll drive up early, hang out at Pike Place and the waterfront like we always do (weather permitting of course) then dinner and the show. Anybody up for a get together before or after? We normally stay at the Pioneer Square Best Western so it's all roughly in the same area.
Nick Celender
Mar 25, 2012 1:35PM
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Because it is, at least if you're not acclimated to it.

 

And these audio snobs used to say it like it was some mystical, undefinable thing

 

 

DanWeber - DW513
Mar 25, 2012 1:33PM
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Bradley, that's crazy! 2 hours for the live Ornette! I expected at least 24 hours... and probably from Cam! Thank you so much!
same thing backwards - patrick
Mar 25, 2012 12:55PM
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I just saw this on Chuck Eddy's Wikipedia page:
He has also programmed several artist-specific web radio stations for Clear Channel.
Does anyone know anything about this?
same thing backwards - patrick
Mar 25, 2012 12:38PM
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I think in the beginning, the whole vinyl thing was a response to terrible mp3 quality

Let me assure you that that wasn't the case when I started buying vinyl in 1984. Later on, I kept doing vinyl because charging $5-10 extra for a CD was f**king  robbery that I still don't understand why anyone tolerated (of course nowadays prices are the other way around and I pretty much ignore vinyl).

this "warmth" that people talk about is really constant, low-level distortion.

You say that like it's a bad thing.


Bradley Sroka
Mar 25, 2012 12:17PM
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hmm... Ornette's live "Caravan of Dreams" - that's not digital yet... although knowing this community, it will be shortly.

Funny, I just digitized this a few months ago: http://goo.gl/wZ1bI

Jason Gubbels
Mar 25, 2012 11:42AM
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which pieces of vinyl keep drawing you back despite having the digital version?
I sometimes pull out the handful of vinyl I still have handy to gaze at the cover art and back notes while I play the cd. I also spend most of time in the few record stores left here in San Diego pulling out vinyl releases just to savor the larger graphic design. Since my music buying habits matured during the height of the cd and the low point of vinyl, I've never had much of an urge to start supplanting digital with records. But, again, those covers......
Nick Celender
Mar 25, 2012 11:13AM
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For what it's worth, I would say "none" for vinyl.  Probably a ton of personal reasons why but my preference for music is totally digital, and when I buy a CD it's so I can rip it in high quality.  I have one small rack for CDs and right now it's holding 8 jewel cases.  After I rip them, they just take up space and I've even thrown some away.  Many have been lost. 

 

I think in the beginning, the whole vinyl thing was a response to terrible mp3 quality.  At that point (up to about 2006), vinyl often did sound better.  Also, you're more likely to play a turntable through better speakers than crap powered computer speakers.  But when affordable disk space allowed for great mp3 quality, a lot of peoples music collections became digital.  Vinyl usually sounds pretty bad to me now.  Dust on the thing, old and beat up needle, and this "warmth" that people talk about is really constant, low-level distortion.  I have a small vinyl colletion that is on the top shelf of a closet, and my turntable is down in the basement with other stuff.  

 

A few friends have turntables and it's like a conversation piece, it's more fun to take out the big sleeve and make a big to-do about putting it on.

DanWeber - DW513
Mar 25, 2012 10:43AM
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Speaking of vinyl to digital conversions - here's a question for Witnesses: which pieces of vinyl keep drawing you back despite having the digital version? And for what reason? Sound quality? Emotion? For me, it's Springsteen's "The River". I remember as a 17 year old being invited to a pre-release listening party at a NYC radio station. The album was played for us on a turntable a few months before it's release and the DJs asked us what would make a good single etc. As a parting gift, they gave us the lp. Years later, I bought the CD, but nothing compares to the memory of that first needle drop at that radio station.
richbogich
Mar 25, 2012 10:21AM
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Yea, thanks Cam for the Itchy Twitchy. Didn't have it. And it's solid stuff.
DanWeber - DW513
Mar 25, 2012 10:18AM
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Ditto John. Many thanks to George and Cam for the Minit and Sue comps. Now I have two fewer reasons to go down to my basement, rummage through my vinyl and dust off my Technics turntable. Wait a sec, I miss my vinyl! I'm going down there now -- hmm... Ornette's live "Caravan of Dreams" - that's not digital yet... although knowing this community, it will be shortly. Good Sunday all.
John Hollyday
Mar 25, 2012 7:57AM
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Thanks to George and Cam for the It Will Stand and Itchy Twitchy Feelings downloads.  I had these on vinyl, and always wanted digital versions.

At least for me, Itchy Twitchy Feelings downloaded with the wrong song order.  I also pulled together the year of release as best I could from the internet (in case of future singles polls).  For those interested, it should be:

Itchy Twitchy Feeling (1958)
She Blew A Good Thing (1966)
She Put The Hurt On Me (1962)
Don't Start Me Talking (1960)
Daddy Rollin' Stone (1962)
Believe It Or Not (1959)
I Was Born A Loser (1966)

Mockingbird (1963)
That's How Heartaches Are Made (1963)
A Fool In Love (1960)
The Real Thing (1965)
Leave Me Alone (1963)
I Can't Stand It (1964)
It's Gonna Work Out Fine (1961)

The track order is especially important on this one, since the first side is male vocalists, and the second side is female vocalists (with some help from Charlie Foxx and Ike Turner).


bradluen
Mar 25, 2012 4:07AM
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2003 notes, ain't no grave edition:

You can't imagine Johnny Cash practising deliberate self-injury, but that's the least important aspect of "Hurt". Cash knows that there are innumerable ways to harm yourself without intending to. The limitation is that everyone knows this. I'd rather listen to Cash speculate about the Second Coming, but "The Man Comes Around" is 2002.

It took Warren Zevon a lifetime to learn what everyone knows about love, during which time he also picked up a songwriting trick or two. The song from The Wind I've found stickiest is "She's Too Good for Me". The resolution that Zevon makes his melody earn is complete - the ending is an unhappy one, but the tune helps us accept this.
same thing backwards - patrick
Mar 24, 2012 8:18PM
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"Maps" and "99 Problems" are '04?
They're both tracks from 2003 that didn't get released as singles until 2004. However, "Maps" is a tricky one since it was all over the polls in 2003 - it was #18 in P&J that year, and then #9 in 2004. To avoid splitting the vote, though, I would consider it a 2004 release.
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about the blogger

Robert Christgau

Starting in 1967, Robert Christgau has covered popular music for The Village Voice, Esquire, Blender, Playboy, Rolling Stone, and many other publications. He teaches in New York University's Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music, maintains a comprehensive website at robertchristgau.com, and has published five books based on his journalism. He has written for MSN Music since 2006.

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