It’s no real feat to sing about pickups to guys driving pickups, or about the pain of lost love to the lovelorn. The greats, however, document the human condition in contexts outside our own experiences and still we understand. James McMurtry is one of the greats. He’s done it time and time again, taking us to that Hurricane Party, a family reunion at Uncle Slayton’s, a dying textile factory town, even to a place they called Levelland. Complicated Game, McMurtry’s new record, shows that he still knows how to make poetic story telling look simple, and that he hasn’t run out of places to take us.
In “Carlisle’s Haul”, we are going seine fishing. Carlisle needs money, and why would the end of commercial fishing season slow anyone down? Uncle Freddy lines up the boys to help, and while they end up with a string of croakers for Sunday dinner and a nine-pound blue, the fishing trip is a failure. As the lights come off the sandbar, the money situation is the same. Of course, Carlisle and Uncle Freddy knew the outcome “long before the seine [could] make a circle.” And it’s not just Carlisle – McMurtry makes it clear that fishermen are not getting ahead, they’re falling behind. “Nowadays crabbing and fishing, hanging onto a pot to piss in is just about the best a man can do.”
“South Dakota” tells of the veteran who, after a homecoming night on the town in Rapid City with his brothers, must face the reality that “there ain’t much between the Pole and South Dakota.” Winter comes early up there, and “barbed wire won’t stop the wind.” The early snow will kill your cattle and leave you with nothing but soggy hides and a realization that you “might as well re-up again.”
“How’m I Gonna Find You Now” finds our hero in a car, on the lookout for a misplaced lover. The car has a rattle in the dash, a hole in the floorboard, and a rag in the gas tank. He’s drinking coffee and chasing his blood pressure pills with Red Bull. The song is fast paced, with banjo and electric guitar. As I listen, I find that I’m not only riding shotgun on the search for that woman, but also imagining the night when I get to hear McMurtry and his band rock out on this one live.
McMurtry takes us to a wedding party full of old and desperate misbehavers in “You Got To Me”. Our narrator is remembering the one that got away. “You got to me/brought all this empty down on top of me/I didn’t know but we were not to be/but I know a thing or two now.” A thing or two, indeed. And in “She Loves Me”, he’s got to go away, and while he’s gone, she’ll be doing the wild thing with some guy who rides a borrowed Harley. When he comes back, though, she’ll still be his. “It was part of our agreement/I signed off on the deal/I must admit I never saw it/happening for real.” It’s real, all right, real enough, when he sings it.
As unconventional as McMurtry is, he remains married to a norm that changes little. The arrangements or instrumentation may differ, he may talk it more than sing it, or sing it more than you would expect, but in the end, the trademark of his work is his voice, both literally and figuratively. It’s what we’ve come to expect from him, and he uses that voice effectively each time out. Sometimes it’s better when things don’t change so much. While new can be good, good stays good, and it doesn’t need new if it’s good enough. McMurtry is way beyond good enough, and Complicated Game shows it once again.
Complicated Game was released February 24.
