Robbie Fulks: Gone Away Backward
Always the contentious kind, Robbie Fulks flexes the old Tareyton Cigarettes mode of doing business: “I’d rather fight than switch.” To that end, he’s remained staunchly Appalachian, long before Americana deemed acoustic roots music its own oeuvre. With Gone Away Backward, he delivers a tour du force of bluegrass-derived spare country.
The frank “Imogene” is a bawdy come-on that’s equal parts minstrel show and masturbator’s boast, while the banjo-based “Sometimes the Grass Is Really Greener” impales the contrivance of the star-making machinery with the admission “the record company man confessed he liked me, but he’d have to shave a few edges down/ cut my hair like Brooks & Dunn’s, trade the banjo for some drums/cause no one’s gonna buy my old high lonesome sound.”
It’s not all ribald irony. The opening “I’ll Trade You Money for Wine” is a fiddle-laced reel that distills alcoholism’s grip, while the halting, Celtic-feeling “The Many Disguises of God” puts divinity in real-life contexts, and “Where I Fell” shows the hypocrisy of an American way of life quickly eroding with a John Prinean grasp of small details and characters that speak to greater, sadder truths.