Music |
T Bone Burnett
By
Published: Jan 01, 2007
Category:
Rock
The True False Identity
T Bone Burnett
If someone mentions T Bone Burnett, you probably think of his movie credits. He worked with the stars of Walk the Line, gently grooming Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon into a credible Johnny Cash and June Carter. (When Witherspoon won an Academy Award, she made sure to thank Burnett.) Before that, Burnett compiled the soundtracks to Cold Mountain, The Ladykillers and, most notably, O Brother Where Art Thou?
Additionally, Burnett has an extensive resume as a producer for The Wallflowers, Roy Orbison, Elvis Costello, Cassandra Wilson and his former wife, Sam Phillips. He’s won Grammy Awards for his production efforts — including the soundtrack of “Walk the Line.” But as a recording artist, he has dropped off the radar for over a decade since his 1991 release, The Criminal Under My Own Hat.
Rather unexpectedly, Burnett has once again surfaced as a singer/songwriter with The True False Identity, a quirky effort that has been woefully under-promoted. This release has two formats: straight audio CD and DualDisc CD. The DualDisc version includes “Vidiocyncracy”, an avant-garde video piece — that is, a beatnik-style performance with bordello colors and free-verse links between songs — directed by Jesse Dylan. As engaging as “Vidiocyncracy” is, I’ll focus instead on the audio version: just the songs.
Like the best of art house cinema, “The True False Identity” sends images cascading and rumbling through my head — this is very visual music. For example, the opening track, “Zombieland,” is a dry diatribe against those who manufacture and consume the media. The compulsive voodoo rhythms have an edge that cuts like a stiletto; the accompanying rhymes are chanted like a spell concocted to raise the spirits of dissent that were left for dead after the Sixties came to a halt.
The common theme of these songs is not so much a scream of protest but rather a hoarse whisper of discontent. Burnett skillfully conjures images of Vegas excess in “Palestine, Texas” while slipping in his own critique of the Bush agenda. Never one to miss an opportunity to observe what should be obvious, he takes to task not only the President but those of us who cling to “this version of the world [that] will not be here long.”
Burnett heavily borrows from the musical motifs of the Delta Blues by way of Haitian spiritualism. He reworks a classic folk story into a Tennessee Williams four-act scenario complete with mournful ladies-of-the-evening and lustful revenge in the aptly named “There Would Be Hell To Pay.” And Burnett’s work with playwright Sam Shepard has given a theatrical edge to his story songs; they become complex character studies.
The dozen songs in “The True False Identity” — the title is a riff on the personas Burnett has utilized on the covers of past albums — speak like the voice of a higher power channeled through a shaman. Grouped under the headings “Art of the State” and “Poems of the Evening”, there seems to be no clear logic — you can’t quite see which songs fall under which topic. This is actually the funniest joke of this concept CD, as if Burnett is saying that labels really mean nothing, especially once civilians and critics start putting interpretations on them.
In “Blinded By The Darkness” — clearly a pun on Springsteen’s “Blinded by the Light” — we are offered a view of the legacy of the Moral Majority. For Burnett, what has passed for piety is nothing less than the face of the metaphorical Anti-Christ. There is a gospel story hidden within this track that’s reminiscent of a particular animation of Python-era Terry Gilliam: The pastor’s face hides a demon. It takes a special sense of humor….
No question, these motifs may make you uneasy. You may feel pulled apart and shaken. That’s entirely Burnett’s aim; he’s trying to raise the dead within us, telling our minds and souls to come alive and walk out of the mass-marketed graves we have accepted as our cultural fate.
It may take a few more releases from Burnett to break us of our conditioned musical tastes. For now — in a land where American Idolatry rules — it’s enough good news that this musical Samson has once again found the strength to tear down the false structures of our media-ocrity.
— Guest Butler Cynth Bage is a singer/songwriter. Meet her at http://www.myspace.com/cynthbage
To buy “The True False Identity” from Amazon.com, click here.
To buy “The Criminal Under My Own Hat” from Amazon.com, click here.
To buy the soundtrack of “Walk the Line” from Amazon.com, click here.
To buy the soundtrack of “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” from Amazon.com, click here.
To buy the soundtrack of “Cold Mountain” from Amazon.com, click here.
To buy the soundtrack of “The Ladykillers” from Amazon.com, click here.
