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Robbie Fulks
GEORGIA HARD
(Yep Roc)
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Chicago-based country singer Robbie Fulks — a tall, weedy guy with a lean, elastic voice to match — is probably best known for his vinegary anti-Nashville harangue "Fuck This Town," which requires about as much exegesis as "Pop That Coochie." Yet if these days Fulks defines himself his opposition to the country establishment — a dodgy idea, just as it is for radiophobic indie-rockers — that doesn’t mean he’s without affection for the way Music City used to work. As he explains in Georgia Hard’s eloquent liner-note essay, he’s still inspired by the work of early-’60s tunesmiths like Bill Anderson and Roger Miller, who "were then gentrifying country, expanding its reach and mainstreaming its moral tone, softening Baptist fervor into urbane mood-indigo, replacing hell-raising and hayrides with marriages and mortgages." Fulks does a bit of that himself here: over warm, fine-lined arrangements with room for both banjo and electric piano, he tells funny, touching stories about ordinary folks in slightly extraordinary situations. The disc’s best is "I’m Gonna Take You Home (And Make You Like Me)," a talky, biz-satirizing duet with his wife, Donna, that sounds like an excerpt from a forgotten Broadway musical. (Robbie Fulks headlines next Thursday, June 2, at T.T. the Bear’s Place, 10 Brookline Street in Central Square, with Rod Picott and Charlie Chesterman and His Legendary Motorbikes; call 617-492-BEAR.)
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