[rating=8.00]
Charlie Parr’s latest album (roughly the *sixteenth* from the Minnesotan roots mainstay) is a fascinating feat of fine songwriting and quality production work. Recorded at Down Yonder Farm in North Carolina, it shows a complex maturity while simultaneously harkening back to Parr’s earlier, primitive-style recordings. Still, there is a progressivism in its eleven tracks that both compliments and defies the seeming simplicity of the “primitive” styles which defines Parr’s stock in trade.
The album kicks off with “Evil Companion,” a rolling, rollicking country blues parlayed in fiery terms on Parr’s twelve-string guitar. The benefit of a full backing band – a tool that this musician has not utilized before pays off instantly in the pumping drums and loose, saloon-style piano playing that helps propel the song.
Throughout Stumpjumper, Parr’s guitar and banjo playing is augmented by what is called in the liner notes a “short piano,” which a brief bit of research reveals to be essentially an inexpensive beginner’s piano. It is an interesting choice to include and play on such an instrument, but what it does is to add a serious smattering of barroom feel to each of these tunes. In short, it is the perfect choice for Parr’s style of musicianship, where his original compositions could already as easily have been discovered a near century earlier by archivist Alan Lomax.
Indeed, it is a great surprise to imagine that this album was not penned by someone whose origins are rooted in the Appalachian hillsides, or parts deeper south. The folky wisdom of “Remember Me If I Forget” is a perfect tribute to this ethos; lines like “When I was young, we looked after our folks / Now we’re in the way, both too young and too old” pay tribute an old-timey vision of simplicity, perhaps incongruous with modern society but eliciting a simple charm as channeled through Parr’s gruff, earnest voice.
The Deep South vibe is particularly heavy on the breakneck banjo workout “Empty Out Your Pockets,” which sounds like it could have been authored by a member of the Dickinson family for execution by the North Mississippi Allstars. With its charge that “When Jesus gets here, he’s gonna burn that whole town down,” this gospel blues careens around corners. Biblical references abound throughout the album; the apocalyptic “Resurrection” recounts the tale of Lazarus against some of the most experimental sounds that Charlie Parr has coaxed from his cache of instruments. This powerful tune in particular is testament to the timelessness of writing songs in the folk tradition, and speaking truth to power within that context.
The themes of Stumpjumper are wide-ranging and thoughtful. Social justice is considered in the reworked retelling of “Delia”; the workingman’s blues are considered in the rustic title track ; timelessness itself is explored in “Over the Red Cedar.” With such a natural grasp of the lingo of Southern roots, it really is a revelatory surprise that Charlie Parr is not native to that region. These tunes would just as naturally fit on a recording of Bukka White, but instead they are a gift to us today, as fresh and insightful as any recording by those old country bluesmen – and with the added benefit of a great backing band to add some serious punch.
