ALBUM REVIEWS

Jesse Malin
The Fine Art of Self-Destruction
One Little Indian October 2002
@www.vanguard-online.co.uk

 Y'know - sometimes I just wanna hear some good ole boy singing about how his ole dog got cirrhosis of the paw and his woman and his best friend are having a better time than him. Plenty of miserable times here but no references to dogs, horses or Stetsons. This is alt country. And good stuff at that, treading the same territory as a few but with a soul of his own. Being called Jesse will do all that to you - well, it will if you grow up in Glasgow, which I gather Jesse Malin didn't. I hear nice guitar, sad, downtuned piano and any number of Wilco-isms. There is a hard edge to the music and plenty of faster stuff too. There are more than a few that'll edge their way into your singalong short term memory (Wendy, Riding On The Subway). Lyrically, this is a set of tales from the dark side - Ryan Adams (who produced this and plays on it) says 'Jesse Malin's songs are so good they hurt'. There are a couple of songs about that great symbol - trains, but this isn't country, so they become subway trains. There's a great closer about being alone, thinking about your ex at Christmas with ten bucks in your pocket. This is high low romanticism, the rosetta stones of down and grimy songwriting are all there - bar napkins, Kerouac, drink, guns, dead flowers, dreams, death, blood, letters, cigarettes, cards, shades and shitty childhoods. Then sometimes Jesse just cuts loose with a whisky edged gravel sing / shout of 'I don't need anyone' in a way that implies the opposite. Pretty miserable, very redemptive. Excellent singing-along-with-a-whisky-music for maudlin drunks. Or you could dance to it with some sad eyed girl and start some doomed but pretty relationship that'll end in blood and tears. Almost a Lou Reed singing country. Yup

Ross McGibbon