\n“This moonlight in New York will not go away
\nI sit in this hotel and tonight I’m just too drunk to pray…
\nShe said that she’d always love me
\nBut that she might not always stay…”<\/i>
\n–“Twenty Third Street”, Bill Morrissey<\/p>\n
There are a lot of glib statements I could start this review
\nwith. I
\ncould tell you how Bill Morrissey is one of the best artists
\nI’d never
\nheard; hell, I could say that he’s the best artist you’ve
\nnever heard,
\nand I’d probably be right. I could tell you about a Grammy
\nnomination, or nine CDs of work, or a lot of things.<\/p>\n
But the most important thing I can tell you is this: when
\nMorrissey sings the lines above, the first lines of music on
\nSomething I Saw Or Thought I Saw<\/i>, chills run down my spine.
\nHe’s good. He’s a storyteller, a master of musical snapshots along
\nthe lines of Harry Chapin or Shawn Mullins. (In fact, my first
\nlisten to this album resulted in me deciding that either Shawn
\nMullins owns every Bill Morrissey CD in existence, or divergent
\nevolution exists.)<\/p>\n
\nThis is the fun part of this job. I get to discover people
\nwho take
\nmy breath away. Add Bill Morrissey to the list. He’s part
\nfolk, part
\nblues, part country, with an idiosyncratic voice that’s equal
\nparts Tom Waits with better diction, Burl Ives with more dry
\nrealism, and Johnny Cash with New England rather than Tennessee in
\nhis drawl. His lyrics are brilliant, poetry in motion, and he
\nplainly loves words for the sake of words. (No mistake, I suspect;
\nhis first novel was published in 1999).<\/p>\n
\nThe musicianship on the album is spare but elegant.
\nMorrissey’s
\na competent guitar player, but it’s the supporting musicians
\nwho really flesh Something out and make it what it is. Marc
\nElbaum’s tenor sax on “Buddy Bolden’s Blues”, Cormac McCarthy’s
\nharmonica, Johnny Cunningham’s violin, David Henderson’s heartbeat
\nbass, and Kent Allyn’s keyboards blend seamlessly into a tapestry
\nof wonderful counterpoint to Morrissey’s master storytelling.<\/p>\n
More importantly, Morrissey knows when to strip the sound down;
\none of the best tracks on the CD, “Traveling By Cab”, is just
\nMorrissey and Henderson and a set of biting, incisive words.
\nIt’s hard to pull out tracks for special note, but I think
\n“Mobile”
\nmay be one of the best songs ever written; “Harry’s Last
\nCall” is
\nheartbreakingly cold as a New England nor’easter; “Moving
\nDay” is a single moment of time cut out with a lyrical scalpel and
\npinned to a
\ncard like a dead butterfly; and “Will You Be My Rose?” is a
\nsurprisingly gentle, loving close to the album, a touch of
\nhope after a
\nlong series of dark nights.<\/p>\n
\nSomething I Saw Or Thought I Saw<\/i> is beyond most
\nsuperlatives. Morrissey is a troubadour, a bluesman of the north
\nAtlantic, and I’m currently saving every penny I have to buy his
\nother eight CDs. If you buy one singer-songwriter CD this year, buy
\nthis one. The only reason it doesn’t get an A+ is we don’t give the
\ndarn things.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":28109,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7633],"rating":[5646],"class_list":["post-39504","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-bill-morrissey","rating-rating-a"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=39504"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=39504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}