Depending on your point of view, a troubadour is either a lyric poet, a strolling minstrel or a fuck up with a guitar.
Rodney DeCroo would probably accept that, in his case, the last of these is the most accurate description. However, some qualification is called for since it is probably also true to say that, but for his guitar, he would be an even greater fuck up.
For this Vancouver-based singer-songwriter, now in his mid-forties, spent the first three decades of his life in self destructive mode. During these lost years, drug abuse and alcoholism halted any nobler dreams but now, having stayed clean and sobre for ten years he is able to work out his demons in song.
In an interview with Straight.Com he says "Now, if I get really upset about something, I don't have to go out and have a drink or do something really destructive. I go home and write a song".
His second album , a 2005 live album - War Torn Man - set the tome for the confessional, tell it like it is, attitude to song-writing. This was dedicated to his Vietnam Vet father, a man he unambiguously describes as crazy and psychotic.
Queen Mary Trash is his fifth album and , true to DeCroo's obsessive nature, it follows the principle that nothing succeeds like excess. He presents the daunting, and ultimately overwhelming, challenge of twenty four tortured songs which combine elements country, folk and rock.
His collaborators are guitarist-producer Jon Wood, bassist Ryan Frogett, drummer Ed Goodwin and vocal partner Carolyn Mark.
He mines the same raw material and licks the same wounds as artists like Steve Earle or Neil Young, although as he concedes on You Ain't No One, he is not in the same league as those artists.
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Some tracks, like Borderline are pure Bob Dylan, but he voice also reminds me more of the whining tones of Pere Ubu's David Thomas.
These's an honesty, even tenderness, to his songs as he recounts harsh tales of a harsh world. DeCroo's compassion and empathy for life's losers shines through and one of his strengths of his songs is that he doesn't adopt any moralistic or judgement perspective.
The darkness of the subject matter does however mean that a 90 minute long rant is way too much.Like so many double albums, there is a much better 45 minute record hidden inside.
The switch between rockier tracks, like Riverboat, Van City or Monument, and story songs such as Loser And The Tennessee Girl helps vary the mood a little but it becomes a major test of endurance all the same.
"I can't tell the difference between pleasure and pain", he sings at one point and the dark mood is so relentless that you will probably reach the same conclusion long before your reach the last track.
DeCroo's passion and hard living credentials are not in question but with so much pain to endure and so little pleasure to compensate, this album is a hard grind.
Rodney DeCroo on Myspace
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