Cracker / Leftover Salmon – O Cracker, Where Art Thou?

The cough syrups out. I aint got no cough, but Im freakin sick of all the pollutant strains of hybrid musical messianics goin on out there (hey, it took us this long to fuck up the world dont think youre gonna right it with a couple choruses droppin Youssou NDour chops into the new Tomahawk millennium) and continuing on: The avalanche of nouveau guitbox bands poised for world domination is a superfund slag heap of first world ambition (I decree afflatus and pubescent royalties to neophytes who do not pick up a guitar upon hearing Smells Like Kurt C. and Low) and thus it is with heavy heart I fall upon you to intone that Crackers mangy secret do at the heart of the matter is their belief wed all be a lot better off in a white trash galaxy, and to prove it they have recorded this swingin, pick heavy, almost acoustic Gettysburg Address for lo-fi hometown intellects. Its their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame acceptance speech, a cri de coeur for bent tradition as practiced with fellow ingrates, Leftover Salmon.

You can stop reading this review- the best song on the album is the reworking of Low now. Stone me. Christ you think I wanted it that way? I was rootin for an obscurity clad only in the underwear of acoustically authentic shimmy to rescue my dictatorial reviewer authority, like maybe Mr. Wrong, which Gram Parsons wrote because hes actually a polygamist alive and worshipping on the Arizona-Utah border, and hes lost the Nudi for the Rudi because check out the reggae inflections all over this baby, cf. Mrs. Santa Cruz County (which for all you groupies keeping score: dope smoking, check), bringing us back to Low.

The easy, over intellectualized move for Hickman and Lowery would have been to trash and stomp to death their own hit, of which they are probably a belly full of puke sick of themselves (Charles Manson rendition anyone?), but no! they subvert it with Leftover Salmons deft musical impulses, which in this case means an elastic dub cowboys-in hell watching mercury balls agglomerate and sloooowly roll across the desert sky. Personally, I dont even think David Lowery after five plus minutes got to the point where he fucks the girl, meaning he salvages the song for posterity and rips the heart out of rocks cognoscenti and nothing slaps off a smile on my face quicker than possibly staring at this song like it was a long slide guitar solo elongating the prison of a hit into short-timer emancipation and one world jah-man.

Meaning that the condom is on, were all in the prison of our skin, and Im sorry but I can no longer accept a universe where everyone gets a gold medal, plus I will keep latex between me and the potential trailer baby. There is a difference between replaying a career and re-imagining it. Leftover Salmon are the bluegrass-cajun-yam band swashbucklers so the two-night jam that yielded said effort has the logic of a mind meld. But let me describe the new rules after No gold medal everybody: 2. Theres nothing sacred or authentic about acoustic music unless it contains prestidigitation (slithering close to violence) or fluid exchange (and Lonesome Johnny Blues is the best wackgrass music burnt into this orb); napalm is as authentic as plasma, intuition subscribers will tell you, thought that one is preferential to your interior wax museum; 3. Irony is not contrarian or revolutionary impulse no matter how hoarse the microphone (cf. Mrs. Santa Cruz County & Teen Angst & one-eyed Malibus without a muffler from Mr. Wrong) we heard you right the first time; 4. Contradictions poised on the edge of dissembling and truth are the nap of the matter, and they come close to activation in the sloppy slack sex quotient herein.

It is not as good as the Holy Modal Rounders Have Moicy, but its gracefully unanxious about not getting there.

Credit points for cross-pollination that doesnt dumb down their musical ambitions (whereas most bands usually end up staking out the serialization of their legendary status soap opera to make a living dont confuse the two or Ill have to make it rule 5), that being the implicit knowledge the white trash galaxy can live with the trope: If you wanna change the world/Shut your mouth and start it spinning, knowing full well they cant shut up (otherwise why would they include Waiting For You Girl, an anomaly that screams Shut the hell UP! at the rest of the CD with that mid-tempo Cali anomie intensified by pianistic soap operas and the hung-over bout of too shitty to get out of bed sliding across a Siddhartha vamp flouting incense and the ominous banjo reeking of Silicon Valley blue-collar shoe-shine sniffing?) because this album is less a novella inhabited by their characters (Lets all be someone else/Im tired of being myself yea, nice try) than self-referentially tired unto its bones.

This album is death (the definition of repetition; see my treatise: The advent of Muzak and the death of pop). Hopefully I can sell it to both ND and Creem. And death, dear brothers and sisters in white lightening, is as traditional as it gets.