No Laughing Matter

Robbie Fulks is a funny guy. Though he emerged a couple of decades ago as the smartest smart-aleck in Americana — his bluegrass and country formalism subverted by his lethal lyrical humor — you could sense that he might have an album like this in him.

Upland Stories (out April 1 on Bloodshot) is subtle, rich, reflective, as multilayered in narrative perspective as the music is organic, and rarely funny at all.  It suggests that Fulks faces similar tensions as Randy Newman, Robert Earl Keen and Loudon Wainwright III, songwriters whose funniest material gets the most uproarious response, but whose best work opens a darker, deeper vein. 

There’s a sense of wonder throughout this song cycle, as the melodic purity of “Alabama at Night” and “Needed” casts the sort of spell that can fill your heart or break it. You could bookend this album with 1997’s South Mouth and see just how far Fulks’ artistry has traveled. With spare, acoustic arrangements benefitting from Jenny Scheinman’s violin and vocals, the music echoes the best of Paul Simon (“A Miracle”), Randy Travis (“Never Come Home”) and the late, great Charlie Rich (“Sweet As Sweet Comes”).  

Fulks writes from different perspectives throughout the album, as if singing somebody else’s story, but it’s apparent with the concluding “Fare Thee Well, Carolina Girls” that his own story is in here somewhere, perhaps everywhere. And the listener’s as well.