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North Star Deserter

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Vic Chesnutt

 
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North Star Deserter
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Avg: 4.0 (39 ratings)

Beautiful folk doom n’ gloom from Chesnutt and friends.

  • We Say...

    Review by Britt Robson

    Calling Vic Chesnutt a curmudgeon doesn’t even begin to describe how thoroughly he lays waste to false piety and fatuous placebos. As someone who became a paraplegic through a self-induced drunk driving accident, the singer-songwriter is necessarily acquainted with the entire gamut of emotions. But that’s the point: While there is bitterness, rue and cynicism aplenty on North Star Deserter, Chesnutt is also an artist with an eye and ear for beauty. And that facility ambushes our emotions on key moments throughout the record.

    The same could be said for most of the discs in Chesnutt’s catalog, but what distinguishes Deserter are the various musicians who drop in, most of them Constellation label artists like Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra, members of Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Frankie Sparo, with a glorious ringer like Fugazi guitarist Guy Picciotto thrown in for good measure. Thus, a song like “Everything I Say” can dynamically careen between country blues and heavy metal without a trace of self-consciousness, and Chesnutt can plumb a phrase like “dead wicked winter/ it dances,” with artfully acute timing alongside pizzicato strings on “Glossalalia,” then swell the crescendo on the wings of a wordless choir of voices and a bowed bass.

    When Chesnutt puts out a song entitled “You Are Never Alone,” you know he’s going to stick in the shiv and twist it like a rusty spoon. To the tender refrain of “keep on keepin’ on,” he sweetly advises that it’s okay to get an abortion, gobble drugs like Valtrex or have quadruple bypass surgery. Glad-handing hucksters are also regarded with sly, satirical contempt (“Rustic City Fathers”), and both “Over” and “Debriefing” are cast as merciless postmortems. But then there are compassionate footnotes like the nod to the eponymous poet on “Wallace Stevens,” or the closing track, “Rattle,” where the entire lyrics are, “Can’t say I didn’t rattle the load/ But I’m keeping it on the road.” Both of those are hushed, brief acoustic numbers.

    By contrast, the masterpiece on Deserter, entitled “Splendid,” begins with squealing bowed strings, creaking like the metal clasps on a ship or flagpole. Chesnutt enters amid ominous guitar, talking about roaming in pastures along spring creeks in pine woods and coming upon the sheer, strange beauty of bleached bones. Later, he’s on logging roads, in orchards, along a rocky ridge, enveloped by the orange light of sunset. Then it's on the beach, facing the sun on the rocks, “wild as the weeds.” Between these vividly bucolic scenes, Chesnutt’s yowling voice declares that he was “splendidly, full of life/ wandering the countryside,” and the ache of this now physically forbidden fruit is palpable. The longest song at eight and half minutes, “Splendid” ends with the repeated line, “We did everything we could.” The best solace.

  • They Say...

    Review by Mark Deming, All Music Guide

    In his liner notes to Vic Chesnutt's North Star Deserter, Jem Cohen wrote, "I make films, I'm no record producer. But I needed to bring these particular people together in this particular place . . . I thought they might hit it off." Despite his lack of previous experience in the recording studio, Cohen's instincts were right on the money; he teamed Chesnutt with Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra and a handful of other notable accompanists (including Fugazi's Guy Picciotto, Bruce Cawdron of Godspeed! You Black Emperor, and Chad Jones and Nadia Moss of Frankie Sparrow) for sessions at Montreal's Hotel2Tango Studios, and the result is a truly extraordinary recording. Chesnutt is a songwriter of singular talents, embracing a homey but keenly intelligent expressionism in his songs that conveys a genuine, often touching humanity, but his collaborators on North Star Deserter have taken his music in a powerful new direction. Rather than simply filling out Chesnutt's melodies, these musicians have crafted soundscapes that often turn these songs into great chaotic symphonies, with Chesnutt's simple but confident acoustic guitar anchoring the whole. Sometimes the accompaniment is simple and subtle, as on "Warm," "Over," and "Rattle," while elsewhere the musicians truly do resemble an orchestra; a small string section adds an air of ominous grandeur to "Glossolalia," a mighty organ brings striking dynamics on "Everything I Say," a mass of harmonies and reverb-soaked guitar meshes gloriously with "You Are Never Alone," washes of sound ebb and flow through the atmospheric "Rustic City Fathers," and the ensemble rises into a glorious fusion of beauty and noise on "Debriefing" and "Marathon." On North Star Deserter, the musicians working with Vic Chesnutt serve as collaborators rather than simple accompanists, and they've truly brought out the best in one another; this is powerful, adventurous music that's as challenging as it is beautiful, and ranks with Chesnutt's finest work to date.

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