A wry set of songs rooted in experience and humour.
Over thirty years since the release of his debut, “Songs For The Daily Planet”, Todd Snider’s latest album is clearly marked by the passage of time and experience. The years leading up to the new record have not been the easiest, with a lengthy illness and the loss of friends and mentors such as Kris Kristofferson, John Prine and Jimmy Buffett. As Snider himself says, “I sing about dead friends more than girls these days”.
One visible result of this is there is a notably bluesier feel to Snider’s work here. Snider pulled together a supporting cast of Sterling Finlay, Robbie Crowell, Joe Bisirri, and Aaron Lee Tasjan to work with him on the record. Tasjan, Crowell, and Bisirri also co-produced the “High, Lonesome And Then Some”.
Side one begins with a chugging guitar riff as Snider intones, “I was born in the human condition abandoned like I don’t know how”. As the track progresses, a lead guitar snakes in while Snider trades lines with the backing singers. A backing vocal troupe singing the title of ‘Unforgivable” opens the second song. Snider proceeds to tell ‘the worst story ever told,’ which involves the bizarre story of the eighteenth-century Count of Saint Germain, a man whose tall stories and self-invention would find plenty of parallels in the modern era. The third song ‘While We Still Have a Chance’ turns more into soul/ R&B territory with a sultry bass line over which Snider tries to talk a woman into a trip to Reno, “one more time, while we have still got a chance”.
‘One Four Five Blues’ is pretty much what it says on the tin. Snider talks about the vocal, introducing the concept of “sockdologizing”, which he says in the notes, “is a word that has only been used once before, other than to discuss the one time it was used. To this day, the word remains undefined”. “It’s Hard To Be Happy” closes side one and features some sweet slide guitar and a bit of a barroom chorus of “it’s hard to be happy even when there’s nothing wrong”.
On side two, he shifts the perspective from himself to songs about the person he’s addressing. The first of these is Raelyn Nelson, Willie’s granddaughter, with whom he is apparently friends ‘Stoned Yodel No 2’ is a set of observations with a slight undertow of unrequited affection and a possible delusional “She’s gonna settle for me some day”. Snider moves on to ‘Older Women’, a Don Covay song, singing the praises of older women and contrasting with the stresses of relationships with the younger ones. The song slips into a funky groove with a nice acoustic guitar solo and plenty of interaction between Snider and his backing vocalists.
The album’s title track riffs on the likelihood of finding someone “looking for someone like me” and the futility of either party trying to change. It sounds like a tune destined to be sung along with an audience. The closer is the six-minute ‘The Temptation To Exist’, starting out as something of a blues stomp, blossoming out into a mildly defiant “you’ve got to live a little” as “people die a lot”. The band jams out of the song as bass and lead guitar interplay while the drums lay down a tight beat.
“High, Lonesome And Then Some” is a well-presented set of songs set in the world of people in Snider’s age bracket and combines his solid songwriting and performance with the dry humour for which he is well-known.
