Track Listing
1. Lousy Dance, The
2. I Will Find You
3. Fool's Gold on Main Street
4. Long Dark Night
5. It Will Never Be This Way Again
6. When She Drops Her Veil
7. Rain Asked For a Holiday, The
8. John Train's Blues
| Details | | Contributing Artists: | Ken Vandermark | | Producer: | Michael Krassner | | Distributor: | Alternative Dis. Alliance | | Recording Type: | Studio | | Recording Mode: | Stereo | | SPAR Code: | n/a |
Album Notes
Personnel: Simon Joyner (vocals); Michael Krassner (guitar); Charles Kim (pedal steel guitar); Jessica Billey (violin); Fred Lonberg-Holm (cello, cornet); Ken Vandermank (clarinet); Will Hendricks (accordion, piano, vibraphone); Ernst Long (trumpet, flugelhorn); Jeb Bishop (trombone); Ryan Jembrey (bass); Glenn Kotche (drums, percussion); Chris Deden (percussion).
Engineers: Michael Krassner, Joe Ferguson.
Recorded at Truckstop Studios, Chicago, Illinois in April 1999.
THE LOUSY DANCE is one of those albums in which it feels like there isn't a single note that isn't informed by a rare and divine grace. Lyrically, Joyner eschews the kind of obscurity--deliberate or incidental--that can render inaccessible the lyrics of other poetic singer-songwriters. There are elements of winsome literary ambiguity that recall Faulkner at his most affecting.
The gorgeous "Fool's Gold on Main Street" is flecked with deceptively beautiful turns of phrase: "You can put your life down on paper / but it's not the same as swimming." The lithe ghosts of slide guitar and piano drift in its far recesses like distant memories. When Joyner lets his frail voice crack at the end of several lines, the results can make your heart swell. Somewhere within the redemptive "When She Drops Her Veil," perhaps in the vibraphone melody, there's something that poignantly stirs recollections of childhood. The assembled orchestra, featuring members of Lambchop and Pinetop Seven (among others), with its soft strings and plangent horns, sounds like something from another age--one imagines a loose collection of local musicians offering a back-porch concert somewhere in Western Pennsylvania in the 1860s.
Editorial Reviews
4 out of 5 - ...brims with innovation and depth....There is no excess or bombast on this moving album, just a man whose voice can break your heart without him raising his voice.
Alternative Press (02/01/2000)
...[Simon Joyner's] smartly worded, studied melancholy gets a sympathetic, minor makeover....The combination is startling and affecting enough to make a smoother, less expressive 'singer-songwriter' go out and hang himself.
CMJ (10/18/1999)
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