Charlie Parr – Last of the Better Days Ahead
Smithsonian Folkways Recordings – 30 July 2021
Charlie Parr was bought his first guitar, a 1965 Gibson B-45 12-string, when he was around eight years old. With no one around to give him lessons, he was asked only that he promise never to quit. No pressure then. Starting his music career in Duluth, the home of one of the greatest songwriters of all time, did nothing to ease the potential burden, and this self-taught virtuoso has seemingly had no setbacks in recording some 20 albums (sources differ on the actual number).
Therefore, one would assume that a change of label at this stage in his career would be taken firmly in his stride. The fact that said label just happens to be Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, the non-profit record label of the world-renowned Smithsonian Institute, alters this premise not one jot. Last Of The Better Days Ahead is an engrossing, captivating album from a tireless innovator. Indeed, this release marks something emphatically new in his illustrious career.
That transformation is an intense focus on the word, with his poetic lyricism afforded the opportunity to shine as it takes prime position in front of the sparse and spartan music production, best explained by the man himself, “These songs feel more like poems to me than songs, and I’ve kind of let them have their way in that respect. The music serves these lyrics, rather than the other way around, which is the way I usually organize songs.”
This collection of robust songs is Janus-like in its subject matter, both looking to the past, reflecting upon a life lived, but also forwards upon what is still to come. Explaining that some of the tracks originated from contemplations on specific aspects of brain activity, somewhat like the proverbial bus, in a year that also has seen a similar focus on cerebral activity from Charlie Dore on her latest Like Animals release, this is clearly an album of depth. Within the lyrics, the line between his drawing upon real-life characters and experiences and those that may have been primarily inspired by a fertile imagination may be a little blurred, but a geographical sense of place is very much to the fore. These are songs from the Minnesota paper mills, tales from the iron country and the fisheries.
Primarily, Charlie on vocals, 12-string, resonator and baritone resonator guitars is what you get throughout, with Liz Draper contributing electric and upright bass to three tracks and guest appearances from Tasha Baron, keyboards and Chris Grey, drums on the album’s closing track Decoration Day.
The opener, and title track, Last of the Better Days Ahead, a song about accepting uncertainty, references the narrator regretting selling a prized ʼ64 Falcon car in his 20s, which at the time
… broke your heart to see how it had been so important
but
now it’s grown to unrealistic proportions in your mind
before concluding
… and you need to find some meaning…
… you just sit and watch the sunset turn the entire sky to rust
Parr’s singing on this release is his most vulnerable and potent yet. Blues for Whitefish Lake, 1975, a narrative song recalling a fishing trip with his father, possibly mid-1970s, shows the Bluesman Poet’s yearning, tender vocals off to their very best. Family are also alluded to in 817 Oakland Avenue. Acknowledging their instilling of the value of the importance of friendships, this song about gratitude, inspired by and dedicated to his friends, opens with an almost Caribbean lilt and continues with a feel-good factor at Warp 10, with each successive verse being almost a précis of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, carrying a plea that would undoubtedly make the world a better place,
Has your belly ever been full
And have you fed your family too
Does your table have just a little more room
Then spread it around, do
Spread it all around, do
Then spread it around, do
The description of Tony, a security officer in a trailer yard, beloved by stray dogs “because he knows exactly how it feels”, in Walking Back From Willmar, a chugging, Dust Bowl blues with truly mesmerising picking from Charlie belying his focal dystonia, is followed by an equally stunning slide performance on Anaconda, home the tallest freestanding smokestack in North America and a friend with a penchant for repairing anything and everything with wire coat-hangers.
On Listening to Robert Johnson, the first of the tracks to feature the bass playing of Liz Draper, might well have been conceived at the fabled crossroads, such is its emphatic, dirt-road feel, whilst her contribution to Rain, inspired by Woodie Guthrie, only adds to the eerie, urgent and plaintive sound which is matched by the vulnerability of the lyrics, as Parr intones
When I was so helpless and I had lost my voice
And I was so frightened by all the hateful noise
When I couldn’t bear to raise my head above the safety of the mud
And I simply sank below the surface never to come up
The closing track on the album, Decoration Day, is a gorgeous instrumental, a product of Parr’s side project, Portal iii. The title refers to the day that family graves were tended. At nigh-on 16 minutes, the atmospheric, spacey, psychedelic music, almost raga-like in terms of composition, evokes the landscapes and locations of these graves whilst also suggesting a return to child-like innocence. Experimental, innovative and at odds with the rest of the album, it certainly is, but it works.
Last of the Better Days Ahead is an impressive release, with the blues-playing being of the highest virtuosic calibre. The experimental aspect afforded by the final track opens the way for potentially fascinating diversions and developments, signalling perhaps that, for Charlie, the last of our better days are indeed ahead.
To be released on 30th July, Last Of The Better Days Ahead will be available digitally, on CD and double LP.
Photo credit: Shelly Mosman