Robbie Fulks
\nUpland Stories
\nBloodshot Records, 2016<\/p>\n
Regrettably, I don\u2019t think I have ever seen Fulks in concert, though I really need to.\u00a0 While he isn\u2019t a songwriting factory like Ryan Adams (though brilliant a factory he is), Fulks is a great songwriter, and I am happy to see he continues to create.\u00a0 While most may not remember this, one of my favorite tunes is \u201cF*ck This Town\u201d chronicling his experience as a singer-songwriter in Nashville and their lack of appreciation of his talents.\u00a0 He was originally signed to Bloodshot early on, and left with great fanfare to a major label.\u00a0 After releasing one album on an unappreciative major label, he returned to Bloodshot and has never left.<\/p>\n
In 2016, Fulks is still telling vivid stories.\u00a0 To be fair, I have a few musical friends that reviewers describe as natural storytellers, like my friend Glenna Bell, but I don\u2019t know if listeners experience music the same way that I always seem to, with pictures, with vivid imagery.\u00a0 For me that\u2019s poetry and it’s normal, and with Fulks, its natural.\u00a0 Alabama at Night\u201d evokes the water of the Delta as well as a red-tailed hawk, as if we are traveling by air, flying, alighting at a roadhouse for a rest, a beer, and a meal.\u00a0 The locals are quiet as we explore from one end of the state to explore.\u00a0 The air is cooler than warm and peaceful.<\/p>\n
\u201cNever Come Home\u201d is a story that plays on a familiar theme of returning home from prison, drifting apart, neighborhood gossip, and breaking apart.\u00a0 This is land that Fulks knows too well and tells viscerally, brilliantly, subtly, and painfully, perhaps better than anyone in music at the moment.\u00a0 \u201cNeeded\u201d returns Fulks to his youth and a lost love, a love that returns to us in small moments when someone triggers a smell, a play of light, a smile, a word.\u00a0 The memory is at once bittersweet, beautiful, and powerful.\u00a0 While looking backwards, it pushes us forward.\u00a0 Memories are weird like that.<\/p>\n
\u201cAmerica is Hard Religion\u201d is sparse with violin and banjo.\u00a0 In 2016 with all that is happening politically, it\u2019s not hard to read yourself between the lines, though he may not have intended it thus.\u00a0 Nonetheless, like the land that was stolen from First Nations who died for it, this land has left its mark on all of us.\u00a0 Some of us accept it as conservatives wanting to keep it for ourselves and as feminists, unlike our forefathers, admitting those that bought the international media propaganda and decided to come here to better their lives and the lives of their families.<\/p>\n
There will be more albums from Fulks and hopefully concerts, but it\u2019s difficult to believe that there will ever be a bad album with the creative arts that flow through him and the control he has over his output.<\/p>\n
RadioMike
\n8 May 2016<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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