Todd Snider
East Nashville Skyline
(Oh Boy Records)
Gram Parsons died at 26. Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin and Kurt Cobain all went at the dangerous age of 27. Hank Williams made it to 29. Todd Snider is still breathing at 37—and frankly, he seems a little annoyed about it.
"Too late to die young now," he sighs on "Age Like Wine," the brief, striking opening cut from his new album, East Nashville Skyline. Snider is all too aware of how an early death by misadventure can pump up artistic credentials, as fans and critics alike exaggerate unfulfilled potential and fetishize the departed's earthly accomplishments, the young lion forever unsullied by the ravages of age.
And it's not that he hasn't done his part to make that happen—years of self-destructive behavior have taken their toll, even if they haven't taken him out. He's survived two ODs and several rehabs, but he doesn't quite have a dramatic Aerosmith-style clean-up story to exploit—he's no zealous teetotaler, even if he has cut out everything but wine.
So Snider slogs along, making his reliably smart, funny records for an audience that at this point is unlikely ever to grow beyond a devoted cult. Maybe that's why his sympathy for the losers of the world—and his insistence that he's one, too, at least in relation to his heroes—is all over East Nashville Skyline, its title a nod to Bob Dylan, one of those idols.
Snider's the guy waiting for his wife to bail him out of the "Tilamook County Jail," the defendant in "Incarcerated" doing some unconvincing fast-talking on a TV court show, and a free spirit who's eternally the target of "Conservative Christian, Right-Wing Republican, Straight, White American Males." He even fights for the honor of his adopted hometown in "Nashville," a surprising defense that extends to Music Row as well as his hipper East-side neighborhood. "There ain't nothin' wrong with Nashville," the Oregon native declares. Elsewhere, he steps into the shoes of a beleaguered flunky of Mike Tyson's in the oddly affecting "Iron Mike's Main Man's Last Request." "Who carries the boom box in the entourage?" he demands pitifully. "Me, Mike, Goddammit."
If it's beginning to sound as if East Nashville Skyline is crammed with references to pop culture, that's because it is; in attempting to explain himself, Snider careens off his idols and contemporaries like a pinball. Elvis Presley, The Kingsmen, Marilyn Manson, Marvin Gaye, Jack Ingram and Jason D. Williams all get name-checked over the album's 41 or so minutes. Setting up a swinging take on Billy Joe Shaver's "Good News Blues," Snider offers a shout-out to Billy Joe "for keeping that guy from shootin' me at the Idle Hour that night." Not a bad way to make sure folks know that you hang with Shaver, and that you're the kind of wild-ass that people want to shoot.
Snider's personality cuts through the hyper-referential clutter best when he's cracking a joke, which is often. Humor is his greatest asset, and East Nashville Skyline is frequently laugh-out-loud funny. If you've ever known a particularly charming drug addict, you'll be queasily familiar with the dark laughs Snider wrings out of his characters' incarcerations, persecutions and shattered bones. Apparently, the desperation of drug abuse teaches a person a thing or two about the absurdity of life.
Snider's spot-on delivery is abetted by the album's sound—a grimy, understated backdrop that fits these shaggy-dog stories well. Recorded at the same home studio in which Loretta Lynn and Jack White cut Van Lear Rose, Snider and co-producer and electric guitarist Will Kimbrough know just when to let the singer's battered voice stand more or less naked, and when to protect his modesty with rattling percussion and buzzing guitars.
The mix of pathos and humor pays off most effectively in the album's final one-two punch. First, Snider's own "Sunshine" puts us on a window ledge inside the mind of a determined jumper, the picture dabbed with enough detail to convince us that he knows a thing or two about contemplating suicide. "They tell me depression runs in the family / Well, that doesn't help me much," he pointedly cracks. The instrumental breaks, in which Snider cheerfully whistles the melody, sound ironic—until the optimistic ending, when the same trick is suddenly played straight.
The curtains come down with a jaunty, fingerpicked run through the old chestnut "Enjoy Yourself," sounding a little darker note here than in previous renditions by Bing Crosby and Louis Prima. Snider warns us—and, by implication, himself—to treasure every moment of life, because "It's later than you think." Even if you'll never die young.
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