VIC CHESNUTT

VIC CHESNUTT
NORTH STAR DESERTER (2007)
320 KBPS

The message is simple in "You Are Never Alone," the fifth track on Vic Chesnutt's 11th album: "keep on keepin' on." Trite and cliché by any other artist, Chesnutt makes it work on what may be his most triumphant effort since 1996's About to Choke. Recorded in Montreal with the Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra, Deserter carries not a bell or whistle that dominated his last few records, stripping down and leaving Chesnutt's shrewd, witty lyrics and fragile, plainspoken voice center stage. Not to say the Georgia native is afraid to turn it up (see the echoing guitar attack "Everything I Say" and the stormy feedback of "Debriefing"), but he peels back the orchestral layers on the most indelible songs: the desolate ballad "Fodder on Her Sings," the aforementioned "You Are Never Alone," with its quivering keyboards and defying implications, and the graceful "Wallace Stevens," where the well-read artist dissects the works of a modernist poet. And, never fear, Chesnutt saves his most irritable self-deprecation for the closing "Rattle." That's when the car-accident paraplegic sings, "Can’t say I didn't rattle the load/But I'm keeping it on the road." Thanks, Vic, and keep on keepin' on.

1. Warm
2. Glossolalia
3. Everything I Say
4. Wallace Stevens
5. You Are Never Alone
6. Fodder on Her Wings
7. Splendid
8. Rustic City Fathers
9. Over
10. Debriefing
11. Marathon
12. Rattle