West of Rome

They Say...

Review by Stewart Mason, All Music Guide

A huge musical step forward from the skeletal Little, Vic Chesnutt's second album finds the mercurial singer/songwriter in the sympathetic company of other musicians, who add new and interesting musical ideas and instrumental textures to Chesnutt's unique style. Again produced by Michael Stipe, the album was recorded with the core trio of Chesnutt on guitar (including, for the first time, electric), wife Tina Chesnutt on bass, and Jeffrey Richards (later of Neutral Milk Hotel and Hazeldine) on drums, with others adding cello, violin, keyboards, and other instruments as necessary. Compared to the solo acoustic Little, it's like Pet Sounds, but the added instruments never detract from Chesnutt's stark, quirky, and emotionally bare lyrics. Most importantly, Chesnutt had improved immensely as a singer in the nearly three years since Little had been recorded. His vocals on songs like "Bug" and the lovely, string-enhanced "Soggy Tongues" are deliberately askew, with accents in unexpected places and odd, fractured rhythms, but this time, it's clear that Chesnutt actually means to sound this way, and on more musically straightforward songs like the lyrically opaque "Lucinda Williams," Chesnutt's vocals are stronger and more self-assured than on the occasionally wayward Little. Out of print for years after Texas Hotel closed, West of Rome was reissued in 2004 on the New West label, in a slightly altered form: the heavy rocking, slide guitar-enhanced "Latent/Blatant," which had opened the original CD over Chesnutt and Stipe's protests, is reduced to a bonus track, along with other outtakes, demos, and a pair of solo live recordings, all of which reveal what a musically fruitful period the early '90s were for Chesnutt.