Album Review: Shane Tutmarc – So Hard To Make An Easy Getaway
Gianfranco Callieri
Posted On February 14, 2011
Shane Tutmarc is definitely right: it’s really hard to make an easy getaway. Therefore there’s no use in trying, better live in reality and admit to unconditionally love Tom Waits and try to pay him a tribute from time to time. Why should Tutmarc escape from his own dimension (being a disciple, not a clone, of Tom Waits) when he fits so good in this part?
To be more clear: in the field of music that the author of Rain Dogs defined “surrural” (surreal like a Yves Tanguy painting and rural like an old ramshackle 7-inch record), Tutmarc is always capable of some originality due to his lunatic sense of humor, modesty and elegance.
Ever willing to try something new, it’s no coincidence that this record was released through musicreleaser.com, a fund raising community that releases music through contributions from fans. Instead of the conventional label or self-release, musicreleaser.com gave Tutmarc the opportunity to let his growing fanbase release the music, and now gives members of the site free access to the EP (here)
Even in the short length of an EP, So Hard To Make An Easy Getaway confirms the great impressions from his previous work adding a certain energetic feeling that makes it even more fresh. In Tutmarc’s trademark mosaic of quotations and references, Roy Orbison appears in the hallucinatory lounge of What is This Love?, the rootsy-side of The Beatles in the delicious title-track, the sound of a Southern juke-joint on the hard gospel-blues of When You Found Me, and even the touching acoustic and old-timey poetry of John Hartford with I Know I Should Know Better, which is as simple as it is moving. All the while the wolf-man from Pomona smiles in the background.
Along with any experiment with a new hybrid, things can go too far, as with the devastating three minutes of Southern Pines – a mix of hillbilly nursery rhymes and hard rock solos. But it is comforting to see an artist that always tries to surprise the listener with an unexpected left-turn, instead of merely playing it safe. In any case, the extenuating circumstance is still the same as that night in 1976 when Waits pleaded that it wasn’t the artist who had sinned, but his drunken friend, the piano.
2011, So Hard To Make An Easy Getaway – 7,5
Stream/Download So Hard To Make An Easy Getaway for free on www.musicreleaser.com
Gianfranco Callieri
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