This album was almost called 'Rod Picott's Circus of Misery and Heartbreak' but this hard-touring Nashville-based troubadour thought better of it.
The slightly more upbeat title, a line taken from the track Dreams, at least acknowledges the need for a glimmer of optimism.
Still, they always say that misery loves company and Picott has a plentiful supply of fuck-ups and anguish he needs to share.
There is a received wisdom which holds that if it ain't broke don't fix it; this artist would probably offer the counter argument that if it's old or broken why not write a song about it?
He sings of "when the world turns cold and the birds refuse to sing" on Bluebonnet but this is also a song about a resilient flower that keeps growing back no matter how often you cut it down.
There's a similarly bleak metaphor in I Might Be Broken Now: "You can shoot a sparrow from your window sill, he won't sing no more but another little sparrow will".
The image of buying a wreck of car just to be able to drive to see a woman (65 Falcon) is resolutely romantic but other songs like You're Not Missing Anything and Just A Memory are reminders that when some things, relationships especially, get broke they stay broke.
Other strands of suffering are listed in Where No One Knows My Name, a song about escaping a dead-end, small town existence. Here. it could be argued that a line like "dreams are made for keeping but some things are best kept hid" offers sound advice, but it's also a reflection drawn from bitter experience.
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The sentiments of this song remind me of Steve Earle's Someday while the grim humour of would have been tailor made for a Johnny Cash cover. You get where he's coming from.
More downbeat reflections come when mortality is addressed in Milkweed, a heart breaking song contemplating the death of his father, and on Nobody Knows, he reflects on the eternal and unanswerable mystery of what happens when we all die Do you get wings, or do you just fade away?". <
There's a restless spirit to Picott reflected by the fact that for this album he chose to use an outside producer for the first time and a completely new set of musicians from his previous records.
This desire to shake things up is also apparent in his songs. They tell of striving against the odds for anything that might bring a sense of optimism or permanence.
Needless to say, he still hasn't found what he's looking for. The silver lining is that he'll never go short of ideas for new songs!
Rod Picott's website
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