Paleface CD review: One Big Party

Paleface. Photo by Staton Carter

By Sarah Hall

shall@salisburypost.com

There are annual events we can count on happening every year: taxes, changing seasons, the swallows’ return to Capistrano, and a new Paleface album.

“One Big Party” is the perennial duo’s third CD in three years, one of over a dozen albums put out by PF during his prolific, manifold and sometimes chaotic musical history. And that doesn’t include his regular musical appearances on Avett Brothers albums.

It’s incredible that he manages to record at all, given the relentless tour schedule he maintains, accompanied only by his drumming cohort Monica “Mo” Samalot (the yin to his yang, the descant to his melodies), but she’s all he needs to help impress audiences in venues all over.

When they make their forays into studios to record, the results do seem like one big party, as the title of the latest effort suggests. Friends drop by and join in. Showing up in the latest album are bassist Bob Crawford, pianists Orianna Webb and Taro Baugham, multi-instrumentalists Joe Edel and Ena Kostabi (also producer), and the band Holy Ghost Tent Revival livens up the party in the shuffling “See You When the Sun Goes Down.”

The guest musicians embellish the tracks, but at their heart the songs exist as duets for the road, which is where they get tried, tested and tweaked regularly. Composed with duo performance in mind, the songs are uncluttered, with a simple and raw appeal.

The title “One Big Party” suggests an exuberance that pervades most of the album, but the title track has a somber derivation. PF wrote the song after meeting a woman in a laundromat who had a cast on one arm after a beating from her crack-addicted boyfriend, and she was using the other arm to drink malt liquor from a bottle concealed in a paper bag. It was two o’clock in the afternoon. What had once been a party every night for this woman had become one non-stop binge of drink and regret.

The song doesn’t come across as a downer; it’s treated with a light musical touch. Mo performs the song, one of her rare vocal solos, and her cherubic voice belies the character who inspired the song.

Paleface let the woman know that he came out on the other side of his own battle with alcohol as a better person, and that there’s hope for her, too. He knows he’s lucky to even be here at all, and so every song becomes a celebration.

Since PF is writing tunes to take on the road where audiences want to have fun, the songs are a good fit for party-goers. And the album is a great vehicle for lifting spirits anytime. The CD offers a choice of mantras for improving one’s life: “You Will Get What You Want;” “Analyze It;” “You Gotta Move On.”

Paleface has a wealth of experiences from which to draw for dispensing advice. He was one of the main players in NYC’s Antifolk scene two decades ago. He recorded for Sire and Polydor and toured nationally with acts such as The Breeders and Billy Bragg. Then derailed, and almost killed, by alcohol abuse, Paleface awakened from a long recovery with a new lease on life to return to the Antifolk scene in 2000, surrounded and inspired by such artists as The Moldy Peaches, Regina Spektor, and Langhorne Slim. And that’s where he met Mo.

An especially evocative song is “I Wanna Travel” which has a simple, Woody Guthrie-esque quality as Paleface relates the intellectual constraints of a short-sighted educational system and physical restraints of being trapped in a place by circumstances. But he breaks free, with an unexpected chord and cymbal splash, followed by a wandering improvisatory instrumental sequence.

Listeners are likely to get the song “Rock N Roll,” stuck in their heads with its catchy hook, “I’m like a rock, will you roll me?” inspired by the floor mats in PF’s Chevy van, with no apology to Bob Seger. A close listen to the all the lyrics reveals it’s a sarcastic observation about today’s mainstream music. The song doesn’t emulate today’s popular style, it proves PF could write that way, if he wanted to. Except better.

Fortunately for us, he chooses to keep turning out a steady stream of pure Paleface, and reminding us, as some other philosopher has said, that life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we’re here we might as well dance.

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You can find the album, a video, and more at http://www.palefaceonline.portmerch.com/stores/home.php.

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Paleface will be performing Saturday at Stelia Cafe Lounge, 118 N. Main St. Doors open at 8:30 p.m. Handful of Dave opens. The cover is $8.

For more information call 704-638-6266.