FEATURED REVIEW............................................................20 JUNE 2005
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Artist:
ROBBIE FULKS |
Robbie Fulks doesn't have a mullet. He hasn't lost any of his fingers noodlin' for catfish. And--if my sources are correct--he doesn't drive a Firebird.
Actually, I don't have any sources. I don't even know if Fulks owns a car. If he does, however, you can be sure the damn thing is covered in cheezy bumper stickers--corny sh*t like "Visualize Whirled Peas" and "Stop the Violins."
Georgia Hard is shot through with bumper-sticker humor. Track 7--"All You Can Cheat"--is a typical example of Fulks' brand of pone. The pun is bad enough, but Fulks chooses to stretch it into a painfully extended metaphor:
"Only
four walls and a bed,
But it gets our bodies fed,
Lord, it's all you can cheat, all night long."
Mmm-mmm. That's some good cheatin'.
Clearly Fulks is an intelligent, talented guy. Why he wastes so much of his time trying to remain a novelty act, however, is anyone's guess. Track 5--"I'm Gonna Take You Home (And Make You Like Me)"--falls somewhere between Hee Haw and Jeff Foxworthy. Throughout the song, a supposedly drunken Fulks (who comes off sounding like a lesser Ray Stevens, if you can conceive of such an animal) tries out various lines on a woman in a bar. The woman's rejoinders are sung by Fulks' wife Donna, who also delivers the entirely predictable punchline:
"You fast-talkin', slow-thinkin, gin-guzzlin' hound dog. You are so drunk, you have forgotten that we's married."
They is married? Damnation! (To whom does this drivel appeal, anyway?)
Without a doubt, the album's most perplexing song, however, is "Countrier Than Thou." On the surface the tune is a rowdy send-up of the gentrified alt.country movement:
"Down
at the bar, spinnin' Haggard,
He wore a Johnny Red tattoo,
Overalls, he spat and swaggered,
Lord, he was a Boston Jew.
He loved
bluegrass, (O Brother),
When I said Shania he sneered,
That a word I wouldn't know there,
We like to keep it downhome up here."
Yeah, sure, many of us alt.country folk are Meredith Ochs' review readin', NPR-listenin', fancy beer-drinkin', organic food-eatin', George Bush hatin', liberal pinko heathens who think we think too damn much to be "real country." Fulks has a point--we're ripe for the skewering. (What the hell do Jews have to do with any of this, however? This strange racial reference is amplified by the fact that Fulks delivers several of the above-quoted lines in a stereotypical pidgin. Odd, to say the very least.)
With the exception of the "Boston Jew" bit, the first half of the song is pretty straightforward: the ever-punning Fulks is saying (if I may be so bold as to paraphrase) that he is "countrier" than both the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack and NPR-liberals whose idea of "country" is the O Brother soundtrack. Simultaneously, Fulks mocks the "holier than thou" attitudes of those same NPR-liberals, and their (or "our," I suppose) arrogant pronouncements regarding "authentic" country music.
Just when I was ready to file the song away as something of a modern day "Okie from Muskogee," however, Fulks calls the Evil Texan onto the carpet:
"He's
got a ranch, and a Stetson,
He's a hip-shooting ex-oil king,
Even talks like Buddy Ebsen,
But he's sitting in the West Wing.
Hankenstein I'm well aware of,
But won't soimebody please explain
How you get a county sheriff,
Walking with a frat-boy's brain."
So, after doing his best to alienate his alt-country fan-base, Fulks goes and tries to piss off the handful of rednecks who still buy his albums. Who the hell does he think will buy the "Countrier Than Thou" t-shirts he's peddling on his website, anyway? Shania Twain fans? (I guess he counting on NPR-liberals to have a bout of uber-hip self-loathing, and, well, his redneck fan-base probably didn't notice the Bush reference anyway. Oh, damn--there I go again...)
If it were all just corny jokes and self-congratulatory social commentary, Georgia Hard might be worth a spin or two. Unfortunately, however, the rest of the album is a countrypolitan schlock-fest. The Limburger of the bunch is "Leave It to a Loser" which features swelling strings, a tinkling piano, angel references, crooning--in short the song sounds like something from a Time-Life infomercial:
"But
leave it to a loser,
To fall from an angel's wings,
To let go of all the things,
That held him off the ground."
Blech. Elsewhere, needless key changes, spoken verses, cartoonish singing, overextended metaphors--even a cheeze jazz number ("Right On Redd")--render Georgia Hard unpalatable.
In summation: Don't bother. This is a leading contender for "Cheeze Mess of the Year." Four-and-a-half cheezeballs.
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A NOTE ON THE RATING SYSTEM:
5 CHEEZEBALLS = UNLISTENABLE SCHLOCK
3 CHEEZEBALLS = A DIFFICULT SLOG
1 CHEEZEBALL = THE ODD FORGIVABLE MISSTEP
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