Wednesday 6 November 2013

Dan Baker - Pistol In My Pocket



Tuna Fish and a Pack of Gum

Pistols and rifles: Dan Baker sings very occasionally about firearms because they exist, not because he’s trying to grab any mantle from Charlton Hestons’s cold dead hands. Based near Boston, in a town called Chelsea, Baker is a gritty singer songwriter in as much as he often snarls and shouts his songs, and the ghost of Dylan is in that growl somewhere, a lineage that seems important to me in reflecting musical authenticity, not that Dylan ever howled like a freight train as Baker does near the end of One of Them. The rawness of so many of the fine songs on this album also reflects another kind of authenticity, sincerity over polish, not that the performances aren’t carefully crafted, but just that their immediacy conveys honesty. I like the simple chronological observations of Up On The Roof that seem to evoke the power of music and even a spiritual suggestion, but it gets lost a little in the drawl, again as if any polish would spoil the sincere stream of consciousness in the lyric. Musically it is mainly a piano-in-an-empty-room fullness and the occasional emotive violin of Rob Flax. There’s resignation in the tone at times, not quite world-weary but pragmatic dismay, as in the album closer Not Gonna Say It. This is counter-balanced by my favourite, the comparatively lively Threw Me Down The Well – with Rob Flax’s empathetically tortured violin – and Baker argues against his lover’s mistreatment with all the pained anger of defeat. Brilliant. This is followed by another howling in Never Alone where defiance shuns irony for a genuine declaration of simple pleasures, exemplified in these opening lyrics I have unraveled a little from the seemingly intoxicated slur,

I got six strings, I like to strum
...tuna fish, pack of gum
and I got the moon shining on my soul
I ain’t ever alone

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