Paleface
The Show Is on the Road
(Ramseur, 2009)

Being a highly influential artist is no guarantee of fame and fortune. Take Paleface for example. He hung out with Beck back in the days when they were both starving young artists, but the Beck connection has never translated into any kind of mainstream recognition. He was also one of the first anti-folk artists signed to a major label, but his brush with the popular music machine left him in an alcohol-induced muddle. In 1998, he cleaned up and started issuing his music on lo-fi CDs on his own label but failed to rise above the underground. So, despite being legendary in some circles, most folks had never heard of him.

A few years back, the Avett Brothers, who are more pro-folk than anti-, discovered him and invited him to help out on their Four Thieves Gone album. They included one of his tunes, “Dancin’ Daze”, on the final release. Perhaps the good influence of the Avetts rubbed off on our hero and his partner-in-crime, drummer Monica “Mo” Samalot, because the music on The Show Is on the Road is actually music, a bit folky and a bit pop, with an uplifting feel that replaces the abrasive in-yer-face attitude of his earlier work.

Paleface plays a rolling acoustic guitar figure to introduce “Traveling from North Carolina”, a puzzling ballad complemented by sparse keyboards and Samalot’s mournful, wordless backing harmonies. It could be a love song to a lost lover or to the New York he left behind for the quiet beauty of North Carolina; it’s hard to tell. Still, its haziness makes it a perfect piece of folky mood music. “If Only I” is a duet with Samalot that paints the portrait of lovers trying to communicate after a long history of misunderstanding. It rides a modified Bo Diddley beat and leaves the lovers suspiciously unresolved at its conclusion. “Try to Hold Your Own” describes someone teetering on the edge of a breakdown. The song starts out hopeful and slowly slides into a darker musical space, implying a gradual implosion rather than a dramatic collapse. “Pondering the Night Sky” has a ’60s rock feel, a meditation on mortality and limitation. Samalot’s harmonies again add to the song’s quixotic impulses as Paleface ponders the distance not only between earth and the stars, but also between strangers at a bus stop. “Holy Holy” is a secular spiritual that echoes the cries of the beatniks and poets seeking the ultimate high without the use of controlled substances. Its cheerful vocal and rattling tambourine make it the album’s most exuberant track.

The playing on the album is strong, and the music has a solid groove, but the songs often feel unfinished; ideas that haven’t been fully fleshed out. The title track bounces brightly along with the lyric, which is mostly a repetition of the song’s title. Likewise for “You Are the Girl”, although it does have a Ramones-like simplicity to its aw-shucks romanticism. If the lyrics were as carefully crafted as the music, The Show Is on the Road could have been a great album rather than a pretty good one.

Listen: Various Tracks [at myspace.com]