CD Review

John Linnell
State Songs
Zoe/Rounder 1999

I love They Might Be Giants. They're not exactly folk, but sometimes folksy, simple-seeming and spontaneous - I remember hearing about them mounting a new song every week on their answering machine - or was it their website - and being reminded of Woody Guthrie making up songs for his weekly radio show on KFVD. I love their frenetic energy, quirky lyrics, their barely sane sensibility. I've also been Connecticut's State Troubadour for the last two years, trying to write a few songs that might capture, even if only obliquely, some of the stories of life in this state. So I was really looking forward to John Linnell's collection of State Songs. Anyway, I had to throw out any expectation that these songs would actually reflect their respective states or hang together in any other way. The motif gives Linnell just enough of a framework to hang a set of his typically giddy, nonsensical songs that tease you with hints of a deeper sensibility. "The Songs of the 50 States" sounds like the theme song to a bad 70's TV sitcom - or a parody of one from the Simpsons:

The songs of the fifty, the songs of the fifty states,
The time has come for us to sing about a certain place...
The songs of the fifty, the songs of the fifty states,
No two alike but each connected by a golden thread
I'll try not to forget all the words

The thing is, there is no certain place and the thread is not quite gold; none of the songs reflect anything unique to the state they represent. Switch the titles and they'd still work. The MIDI-generated carnival tune for IL would work fine, say, for NY; another instrumental duet for violin and MIDI keyboard ends with: "lalalalalalalalalalalalalalala: Pennsylvania." OK, maybe "lalalalalalalalalalalala: Louisiana" would be too obvious but didn't he at least consider "lalalalalalalalalalalala: Kentucky?" And I'm not sure why this paeon to WV couldn't work for ND - or AK:

West Virginia
There's another deep inside you and inside the other one there is another (and another)
Like I told you you are concentric in your form
When it's cold you have yourself to keep you warm.

In South Carolina, the singer recalls crashing his bicycle. In Idaho.... well, in the song he hasn't gotten to Idaho yet. All you hear are sirens in the background at the end - presumably because all he remembers of Montana (the next song) is a stay in the hospital ("Montana is just a leg."). A chance meeting of ex-friends/lovers in a job interview ends: "I forget you, I forget you, I forget U-tah." The only song that strives for a grain of regional truth is NH: "No one likes New Hampshire men."

The self-professed scatterbrain Linnell has given us a revised edition of On the Road suited to the cultural distractedness of the 90's - imagine being at the wheel of that ill-fated Cadillac, looking beside you to find Neal Cassidy without the intensity, the sense of spiritual purpose, the fascination with the whirlwind of Americans along the way, or the booze, listening to FM104's morning DJ all the way instead of cool jazz, randomly poking pins in his Rand MacNally. How cool would that be? Of course you'd end up somewhere in Nevada, hanging around while the July 4th parade peeters out and all the families pack up their SUVs and ride off to their afternoon picnics.

A fun romp, but I think even TMBG fans will pass this one over. -HB