{"id":41553,"date":"2009-06-12T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-06-12T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/candyland\/"},"modified":"2009-06-12T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-06-12T00:00:00","slug":"candyland","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/candyland\/","title":{"rendered":"Candyland"},"content":{"rendered":"

While Too Long In The Wasteland<\/i> was James McMurtry\u2019s debut, the first time I heard him was when the great WTTS (92.3 FM, back in the days they were still broadcasting out of Bloomington, IN) was playing \u201cWhere\u2019s Johnny,\u201d the first single from his 1992 CD Candyland<\/i>. I don\u2019t recall being immediately hooked, though I do remember thinking \u2018well, that\u2019s an interesting song\u2019 and then moving on to something else.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Tastes change and people change. That was seventeen years ago, and now I find Candyland<\/u> in my CD player at work on a regular basis. Maybe it\u2019s that I live in Austin now, where McMurtry plays every Wednesday at the Continental Club if he\u2019s in town. Maybe I\u2019m just getting older and wiser. No matter what the reason, Candyland<\/i> is worth a listen or ten.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

With McMurtry, it\u2019s all about the songs, delivered precisely and perfectly in his Droopy Dog crossed with Denis Leary combination of anger and world-weariness. When he sings \u201cThat circus music has got to be hell on the ice cream man\u201d in the title track, I can feel the pain and weariness inherent in his powerful view of suburbia as a sort of purgatory for the blind and the bland. On \u201cHands Like Rain\u201d and \u201cDon\u2019t Waste Away,\u201d he counters that emotion with a certain hope and elegance, and a certain defiance creeps in on \u201cGood Life\u201d and \u201cSave Yourself\u201d (and Lisa Germano\u2019s fiddle really makes \u201cDon\u2019t Waste Away\u201d). <\/o:p><\/p>\n

If there is a miscue on this album, it\u2019s the slightly discordant \u201cStorekeeper,\u201d which comes off to me as a weak attempt to imitate Steve Earle. There may also be something in the fact that McMurtry blew me out of my chair with the first two tracks on the disc, \u201cWhere\u2019s Johnny?\u201d and \u201cVague Directions.\u201d \u201cWhere\u2019s Johnny?\u201d is a stellar documentation of disillusionment and failed promise, while \u201cVague Directions\u201d is just…eerie. Freaky. Disturbing. I\u2019m still not, after all this time, sure what it\u2019s about, but I love it.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

James McMurtry is an underappreciated American treasure, and Candyland<\/i> is one of his best efforts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":29930,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[6789],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-41553","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-james-mcmurtry","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41553","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=41553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41553\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41553"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}