ON ONE OF the songs from Vic Chesnutt‘s latest album, the man claims to be a monster. If so, the singer-songwriter from Athens, Ga., who produces one of this year’s best works in “At the Cut” (Constellation) is one of our favorite beasties.
Too much praise, you may ask? We think not, as “At the Cut,” which Chesnutt created with back-up from members of Fugazi, Godspeed You! Black Emperor and A Silver Mt. Zion, is a spectacularly disturbing, nostalgically melancholy album that succeeds in amazing listeners with both Chesnutt‘s musical skill and profound misery. On the 10-track album, Chesnutt uses both his own acoustic style and more complex, lush arrangements from his fellow musicians to create a disquieting foray into the dark corners of Chesnutt’s memories.
With “At the Cut,” Chesnutt talks about his relationship with his grandmother, struggles with death and mulls over his own moral dilemmas, employing poetic-yet-pained narratives to weave stories of his past and observations of society. Things start off with opener “Courage,” written for friend and multimedia artist Jem Cohen‘s film “Empires of Tin,” a “documentary musical hallucination” inspired by the end of George W. Bush‘s presidency. The song begins with some simple finger-picking, transitions into ominous strings and employs distorted, wailing guitars throughout, all of which surround Chesnutt’s blunt proclamation that “The courage of the coward / Is great than all others” in a threatening whirlwind of sound.
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It’s an effective set-up for the next nine tracks, which continue that despair-filled-cacophony thing. And while some sound more like Chesnutt’s own acoustic style — such as “When the Bottom Fell Out” and “Concord Country Jubilee” — the more multifaceted songs are those that command your attention. That’s not to undercut either “When the Bottom Fell Out” or “Concord Country Jubilee,” because both are memorable for their storytelling style (the former with first-person with lyrics about how “When the bottom fell out / There wasn’t any doubt / I just suddenly found myself free-falling / And from such a high” and the latter a honky-tonk, stream-of-consciousness affair about how “the crowd browsed endlessly” at a local celebration), but they can’t really compete with more epic songs like “Chinaberry Tree” or “We Hovered with Short Wings,” both of which employ more imposing instrumentals.
Share this articleShareOn “Chinaberry Tree,” Chesnutt snarls about “going at the chinaberry tree” with a machete and showing up “the key players” and “their simian groupthink” (kind of like George Washington cutting down the cherry tree, but if he were in “Brave New World”), and the swell of instruments that rise during his soaring chorus can’t be ignored. Similarly, “We Hovered With Short Wings” drips with drums and has Chesnutt doing a healthy amount of bellowing; it’s most powerful when he declares “a change of direction-ing” and switches his roars to whispers.
And that kind of unbridled emotion is what does Chesnutt, and his listeners, the most good. Whether it’s anger (such as on “Flirted With You All My Life,” during which Chesnutt rages against death), regret (on “It Is What It Is,” where he talks about how he’s “like the Invisible Man directing traffic / I’d be ineffective, no matter how enthusiastic”) or sentimental sadness (like closer “Granny,” where he remembers his grandmother and how she used to tell him “You are the light of my life / And the beat of my heart”), those feeling-filled tracks are by far the best on the album.
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It’s a weird juxtaposition: While Chesnutt’s lyrics are straightforward (for example, on “Flirted with You All My Life,” where Chesnutt says, “I even kissed you once or twice / To this day, I swear it was nice / But clearly I was not ready”), his crew’s instrumentation is definitely not. It’s all rough edges, jagged transitions and coarse exteriors, but when coated with Chesnutt’s sincere, aggrieved lyrics, it’s a coupling that provides “At the Cut” with profound success.
Written by Express contributor Roxana Hadadi
Photo by Sandlin Gaither
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