Fred Eaglesmith
Tinderbox
A Major Label
Any FredHeads out there?
Tinderbox, the most recent album from Ontario’s Fred Eaglesmith, could well stand as a milestone album for the (almost) always impressive resident of Port Dover.
Never one to shy away from hot-button topics, this time out Eaglesmith has created Tinderbox, a collection of almost twenty songs both loosely and directly connected to fundamentalist religion and manipulation. He captures sketches of people who hold to strong, imbedded faith. As a concept album, the songs and sounds stand as a vital, dynamic project. The individual songs, when approached singularly, hold the listeners attention and can be appreciated as such.
“Quietly,” “Sweet Corn,” “Shoulder to the Plow,” (written with Mary Gauthier) and “The Light Brigade” stand with anything Eaglesmith has previously written. These are not the catchy songs of 50-Odd Dollars, Drive-In Movie or even Milly’s Café.Eaglesmith has always delved deep, but this time has gone even further into his soul to colour each song with passion while maintaining a unified, coherent sound.
“Shoulder to the Plow” starts out rather easily- seemingly even a bit lazy- before its elegance and brilliance is revealed: “Fox is in the hen house, crow’s in the corn, devil dancing in the church yard blowing his horn; Sun beating down it’s a dusty old road, only one place you can go.” Like the best Texas songwriters- Ray Wylie Hubbard, Guy Clark, Steve Earle- Eaglesmith has that rare ability to combine the familiar and the profound within descriptions that are straightforward, outwardly obvious, and completely original.
The song (“Worked Up Field”) where Kori Heppner talks over Fred’s singing kind of confuses me, but the resulting juxtaposition of her observations of her man’s failings and obsessions with his lamenting about rainfall and trains seems positively real.
Eaglesmith’s tendency to draw toward stylistic annunciation challenges the listener, but provides the album with a touch of southern affectation that feels appropriate given the subject matter.
“Quietly” doesn’t appear to be about religion and fundamentalism, although I suppose the characters within the song could easily be those who attend any of the country churches described elsewhere. To this listener, it is a love song, one of Eaglesmith’s best. There is a tension, a darkness permeating the song, even as “the morning light” invades the bedroom.
This musique noir repeats itself throughout the album. Within “Get On Your Knees,” the narrator finds his strength through prayer with shocking result. “I stayed up til dawn, praying for her soul; Satan was awaiting, she come through the door.”
“Killing Me II” is also dark, but in a different way; here the refrain of “This old world is killing me” is spoken/sung until it becomes mantra-like. Hypnotizing, really.
“Stand” is a straight-forward gospel number, and one senses that Eaglesmith included such a song to further define the lifestyle and society he characterizes throughout Tinderbox. Its singer is in glory, happy to know that his mother no longer has to worry as he “is standing on the rock.” I can hear a bluegrass band doing this one.
There is no hint of arrogance or judgment about Tinderbox. One suspects one knows where Eaglesmith’s allegiances lay, but he serves almost as a reporter- respectfully describing and identifying that which he witnesses.
I can’t swear that all the instruments are acoustic, but it sounds that way to my ears. Maybe I missed some electric bass or other guitar, but the album appears to be predominately unadorned by anything but wood, steel, and percussion. Willie P. Bennett makes his final recorded appearance on this album, and while his individual contributions are not listed, one appreciates what one assumes are his touches of mandolin.
The album sounds a bit like an episode of the HBO series Carnivàle looked. It is grey, dusty, and sparse. The instrumentation is percussion heavy- bells, shakers- and seldom do more than a couple instruments sound prominent in the mix.
Fred has always scared the hell out of me, and after Tinderbox…let’s just say I’m reconsidering the balance- or lack of it-within my own life. More than ever, I’m on Fred’s side. Tinderbox received one of my votes in the initial Polaris Music Prize balloting this summer, and certainly is deserving of any accolades it may receive.
Tinderbox isn’t likely the best place to delve into Fred Eaglesmith’s music for the first time. But, it is certainly worth exploring. It is destined to be considered a classic.
(I’ve attributed Tinderbox to Fred’s A Major Label, but the album packaging doesn’t actually identify it as such.)
