Greg Brown – Milk Of The Moon

Believing that fast and steady wins the race, or at least trusting it’s the surest way to hone your craft and satisfy your soul, Greg Brown releases his eighteenth album in nineteen years. Milk Of The Moon finds Brown further developing his art in a rare but welcome direction: He’s a folk-inclined singer-songwriter who’s unafraid of the studio. Each instrument in the disc’s lean arrangements feels intensely present and tangible, and occupies its own warm space. Consequently, Brown’s rugged and arresting baritone, his every careful word, matters all the more.

Brown spends about half the album in hot pursuit of lovers around his bed. Standouts include the lascivious, writhing roots-rock of “Let Me Be Your Gigolo” and the twanged-up thump of “A Little Excited”, where he announces with a randy grin: “Only thing I want to see today/Is her face six inches away.”

Elsewhere, whether questioning the woman who was “Ashamed Of Our Love” or pleading with a “best friend” never to forget him (accompanied by a country-blues banjo that keeps threatening to pluck “The End”), he says so long to one romantic muse or another. He regrets having to do it, even as he finds himself freshly inspired. “With a kiss she wakes me up/She always leaves too soon,” he gulps on the title track. “As she goes, she fills my cup with the milk of the moon.”

Many of the best moments find Brown neither coming nor going but staying put. “Oh You”, a “They Can’t Take That Away From Me” for the Americana set, is a character sketch (“With your mother’s burden and your father’s stare/With your pretty dresses and your ragged underwear”) born of an enduring devotion.

Always, though, it’s the accompanying music that makes Brown’s lyrics sing. Over the simmering organ and lazy, porch-swing rhythm of “Steady Love”, Brown offers sound romantic advice — “She might like flowers, might like a poem/Might like it better if you were at home” — while behind him a slow and steady groove purrs with the pleasures of commitment.