Evolving Bonfires

I’ve written about Todd Snider before, and it’s probably not that different from anything anyone else has ever said about him.  He’s witty.  He’s smart.  He’s an unapologetic tree huggin’, peace lovin’, pot smokin’, barefootin’, folk singin’ liberal, and damnit if I don’t love him for it.

He just makes so much sense and is able to articulate thoughts so clearly, not to mention making them funny and rhyming it all together.  He’s like a musical version of Jon Stewart who smokes a little more pot and doesn’t try quite as hard (probably because of the pot).

I was thinking about writing a review for his new album Agnostic Hymns and Stoner Fables, but I wanted to respect a line from a song in an earlier album that it’s unfair to judge a book (cover or no cover).  So instead, I thought I’d say why I didn’t like the album, even though it’s a good album, and that it says more about me than the quality of Snider’s music.  

I love Snider’s music because of the lyrical and musical clarity I mentioned earlier.  The lyrics, his guitar playing and the production are just really sharp both musically and lyrically.  Even Peace, Love & Anarchy, an album of demos, sounded pretty damned polished to me.  So when Agnostic Hymns and Stoner Fables suddenly veers away from the biting, witty and clean lyrics I was looking forward to hearing and moves towards some biting, witty and messy lyrics, I was left a little confused.

Not messy like clumsy, but messy like he’s singing falsetto and sort of rhyming thoughts into a song form but somtimes not and sort of singing clearly enough for me to understand him but sometimes not.  He’s still got a few witty zingers on the album, but I get the feeling that his heart is in these under-produced messy works where he’s growling out thoughts and wanting us to catch up to him.

And that’s where he loses me.  He’s never been that interested in people catching up to him in the past.  He’s always seemed content to dance bare-foot around a bonfire, watching it burn and singing his songs regardless of who’s there to listen.  It was that nonchalance that pulled me in when I heard “Talking Seattle Grunge Rock Blues” for the first time.   Now he wants me to keep up as he strings a lot of lyrics together in ways that are hard to follow.  

I know how this sounds:  “Wahhhh!  I want what I’ve always had!  Wahhhh!  New things are hard!,” and maybe there is a little bit of that in there with me.  On his website, though, he says his goal was to make a messy album that made kids want to vandalize their school.  My first thought (besides the fact that kids don’t listen to Snider, they listen to this) was that I don’t want people to vandalize their school because I work at their school.  Suddenly I’m not his audience, and that shift really took me by surprise.

I guess I’m trying to say that I don’t begrudge Snider to try new things (and he does them well on the album), I’m just wondering if the bonfire he danced around moved away from me or me from it.