Drill a Hole in That Substrate and Tell Me What You See: Music: Jim White

Having fun tonight listening to my last.fm station: lastfm://user/MagicDrum/loved    I don't know for sure... you may have to pay to listen, or go to http://www.last.fm/userMagicDrum  & see what you can find.

Jim White was a musician I marked as interesting...

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00026WT6A/ref=reg_hu-wl_mrai-recs/105-4121103-2904467

Jim White's South in its own dark way spins another yarn of wondrous stories where strung out Santa Clauses and Jesus listening to Dylan and driving a motorhome, are but only part of a lyric universe that owes as much to Country myths as to the ghost of Rimbaud.

Yes, this is another of White's "seasons in hell" more Texas, though, than nineteenth century France but probably as hallucinatory. These are tales of a man who, more than raised in America, has been abducted by it as it was an alien mothership.

For those who loved his first two albums, this one may not necessarily be that different, and what I said so far, not completely farfetched. This is not to say that this album lack musical surprises nor artistic growth, and Joe Henry's production has no small part of such accomplishment. Jim White can be dark all by himself but with Henry's aid gains a smokier, jazzier feel, which fits the songs like a silk glove.

In general, the tunes Joe Henry helmed as producer -which account for half the album- are the most interesting ones. I'd say that this is, in its own way, as inspired a collaboration as Loretta Lynn found with Jack White in Van Lear Rose. Of course, the music is far from similar but the producers' tugging and pushing an artist's certain style into new colors and atmospheres is comparable.

"Static In The Radio" -sung with Aimee Mann- and "Combing My Hair In A Brand New Style" are great examples of the musician-producer connection I've described, and so is "Buzzards of Love" with some powerful horns, somewhat reminiscent of Henry's own "Tiny Voices." And then there are three personal favorites of mine: "Bluebird," "That Girl from Brownsville Texas" and Phone Booth in Heaven" -stunning ballads all ... a weakness of mine- which are tender in their own wounded ways.

As White sings that a friend once told him ... "Jim, what you cling to, that's the thing that you had best forget. For ain't no rose bed ever gonna bloom in an untended field of regrets." Well, Jim White is definitely tending those regrets again and some glorious roses have begun to bloom.