Terry Allen

September 19 - 26, 1 9 9 6 [Off the Record]

*** Terry Allen

HUMAN REMAINS

(Sugar Hill)
Human remains do indeed fill Allen's cynical songs, but few of his characters are physically dead. The reclusive musician and visual and performance artist is joined here by David Byrne, plus Allen's fellow Lubbock (Texas) songwriters Joe Ely and Jo Carol Pierce. Lucinda Williams duets as an alcoholic whose long-suffering man self-destructively turns the tables on her.
As usual, the growly-voiced Allen uses a spectrum of surprising arrangements. Dixieland jazz frames his image of a woman seeking a sterile, antiseptic life. Amid screaming metal, "Frère Jacques" innocently chimes while an armed 13-year-old spews venom. Standing buck naked before God, Terry makes his loopy spiritual quest seem as quixotic as Pierce's. In a song from the collaborative play Chippie, Christ spreads his dark wings over a syphilitic hooker's dead infant as Scottish bagpipes wail. But beneath the bleakness, Allen actually sympathizes with his characters. That makes his portraits all the more gripping.
-- Bruce Sylvester