I’ve often written before about how press releases can sometimes
scare me away from listening to a particular album for a time.
Geoff Muldaur’s latest effort,
The Secret Handshake, is another example of a disc that fell
to pre-listening bias. Reading through the liner notes intrigued me
enough, but the press releases – and the album’s own description of
itself as “Blues & Gospel” – was enough to push this disc to
the back of the “to be reviewed” pile in the Pierce Memorial
Archives.
When will I learn? It seems the discs I’m the most scared of
listening to turn out to be the better albums. Muldaur is not the
strongest vocalist in the world, but his mastery of the material is
more than enough to power
The Secret Handshake to being a great album.
While one could see religious overtones in some of the songs
(“This World Is Not My Home,” “I Believe I’ll Go Back Home”), to
classify this album as gospel is stylistically incorrect. I’d
rather classify it as “folk,” just because there are so many other
influences at work in the music at the same time that the songs
themselves transcend any one strict boundary. (Maybe this is why
Muldaur calls the music on this album “American Music” on the back
of the CD cover.)
Granted, it does take some time to really get into this disc –
often because Muldaur is not the world’s greatest singer.
(Counterpoint: he’s not bad, but you can hear limitations.) Tracks
like “Alberta” and “This World Is Not My Home” seem to stretch on
forever – not the best way to start out the disc. (Actually, the
disc’s opening track “The Wild Ox Moan” isn’t bad at all.)
Things change for the better once you reach “Got To Find Blind
Lemon – Part One”; this is where the natural folkiness of Muldaur
kicks in, and the album becomes much more listenable and fun.
Thanks to a funky bass line provided by Bill Rich, “Chevrolet / Big
Alice” seems to fly by, even though it clocks in at well over seven
minutes.
The only other difficult song to get through – at least for me,
because I’m not an afficionado of banjo music – was “Mistreated
Mama”. Otherwise, Muldaur and his cast of musicians turn a
forgotten form of music (at least forgotten to the MTV generation)
and shows just how vital it is to both our past and our
present.
The Secret Handshake is an album that takes some time to
warm up to, but is one that is, for the most part, worth the
effort.
