“A very welcome evolution… instantly classic-sounding songs“
If Neil Young had written the song ‘The Loner’ with anyone in mind besides himself, it could well have been Charlie Parr. If ever there was a living embodiment of the characteristics that make up a solitary individualist following their own path, it must be Charlie. He is about to release his eighteenth album, Little Sun, in a prolific career that has seen him pay no mind to anything even vaguely resembling a commercial career plan. By his own admission, he is a man who lives for the creative process in music making and performance and who always has an exit strategy close to hand. Charlie feels at home with the freedom of the open road; he never wants to overburden himself with social interactions, so if the urge to leave has a stronger pull, he does just that: he gets up and leaves. This unshackled lifestyle has always extended to the recording studio, an environment he historically has wanted to get in and out of with minimum fuss and maximum speed.
Consequently, all Charlie’s albums, to this point, have been recorded live, often as one or first-take efforts with any minor errors or imperfections left in. But things have changed; ‘Little Sun’ is to be the first Parr album where the hand of a producer, Tucker Martine, is clearly in evidence and the first record in which the artist has explored the process with overdub touches and a more rounded, expansive band sound. As great as the ramshackle approach undoubtedly was, the end product does rather suggest this is a very welcome evolution.
Recorded in Portland, Oregon, during a period of heavy snow, Charlie describes walking into the studio and just hanging out, something that “felt really comfortable, which is unusual for me.” That air of cooperation between the band and artist is audible within these grooves right from the off as the echoey drums fade in on ‘Portland Ave,’ there are good vibrations spilling out of my speakers. It is a loose shuffle of an opener, built around a tasty little electric guitar riff as Charlie walks it home with the sound of honky keys and a locked-in ensemble bouncing off the walls. Music bleeding in from every corner of the environment is a recurring theme throughout, as the title track itself seeps with nostalgia for a past scene when Charlie would go and hang out listening to live music. Singing of hundred-year-old melodies and rattling worn-out reeds, Parr’s national guitar is a bolt-on blues reference point while the sound around is raw, dirty and swampy, the electric guitar and harmonica digging in the dirt as the wonderful Anna Tivel appears on occasional bursts of backing vocal.
‘Bearhead Lake’ is as expansive over seven minutes as its subject matter, all gently rising and receding waves of atmospheric guitar. ‘Boombox,’ a real pot-boiler of an album teaser track, kicks out its good time dancing feet to the sounds that surround a cityscape. At times, on ‘Pale Fire’ for example, the deep textures remind me of those dark sonic rumblings Daniel Lanois unlocked when producing Bob Dylan. The fiddle on ‘Ten Watt’ is delightfully breezy as a nonchalant Parr sings of a twenty-watt requirement, “well I might be up to ten.” Finally, after ‘Stray’ empathetically shines a light on human suffering no great distance from any of us, our singer, like a true loner, jauntily retreats to a happier space inside his own mind with ‘Sloth.’
Fans of Charlie Parr will hold this one up with the best of his catalogue, but with the attention-grabbing, easy-on-the-ear production of ‘Little Sun,’ there is a strong possibility for new converts to land at his door too. Anyone with an ear for singer-songwriters of an independent grain with a facility for turning their preoccupations into instantly classic-sounding songs will find much to love and admire in the music of Charlie Parr, and there might be no better place to start than right here.
Pre-Order Little Sun: https://orcd.co/charlie-parr-little-sun
Charlie Parr is on tour now; full details can be found at www.charlieparr.com/tour-dates.