This is only the fourth of CHRIS BROKAW'S solo albums that I have, but I do also have many of the other albums he's played on with Come, Codeine, Steve Wynn and others so I was looking forward to hearing it.
I haven't been disappointed even if I didn't follow Chris' advice in the press release to read the lyric sheet while listening to the album. I have certainly looked at it as I've come back to the album over and over again in the last few weeks and it really rewards the listener it is also a damnably good album.
Unlike his 2010 album with Geoff Farina (The Angels Message To Me) or the brilliant Incredible Love, Gambler's Ecstacy isn't just Chris' quiet side but mixes in the loud rockier stuff with the odd quieter moment so it is more like a Come album but with Chris upfront singing.
It opens with Criminals: a loud, dissonant tune that has the brilliant line of "Off the shore swims a whore." That certainly jumped out at me. Danny Borracho may well have been Ugly And Macho but the music that goes with this tale of the decline of the Hapsburg empire as told while Danny is running circles around Boston Common amounts to a brilliant song.
Into The woods makes me stop what I'm doing every time it comes on. I am compelled to listen as it's such an insistent tune. As it unfolds, we wonder what Chris will find when he goes into the woods close to his new home town of Seattle. I hope it isn't what Lars Von Trier found in those woods.
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The Appetites is a voracious tune that goes round and round and all over the place over its 9 minute plus course, telling us a tale of an argument and its aftermath as the guitars go round and round like an pointless, never-to-be-solved fight might.
California is a very slow, ruminative tune that wouldn't have sounded out of place on his Wandering As Water album. It gets washed away as How To Listen crashes in and very much takes hold as this very angry guy is sounding off full of bile and hate of how he's been in trouble since he was eight. Oh, and how he's killed his lovers and doesn't share our fear of drowning. So there. A great song, basically.
Anacordia is again a slow, quiet song before he goes and finishes the album with a great soundscape of guitars washing over us on Rich and Vanessa. In the Box closes the album with the guitars expiring. A great finish to a really cool LP.
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