Music Review: Indie Round-Up - Sam Baker, Peter Himmelman

Sam Baker, Pretty World

When Sam Baker was in his early thirties, a terrorist bomb blew up the train he was riding in Peru. Eight died in the attack. Among many other injuries, Baker lost all hearing in one ear and partial hearing in the other. Because of this disability, his gravelly, blurred singing sounds very odd, even disturbing at first. But a couple of songs into his marvelous new CD you begin to appreciate the contrast between the ragged, pained sound of his voice and the bright arc of his talent.

The songs are so simply structured they seem naked, and the spare poetry of the lyrics quietly chafes your sensibility until you have to spin back and listen again. Baker sings of the American fringe: a prostitute, an orphan, a gambler, an oilman's ne'er-do-well son, "a woman who puts things in boxes." Using spindly folk idioms and few but choice words, Baker brings his characters to life like the best of Springsteen's creations, or like those of a short story writer such as Raymond Carver.

A few of the songs paint pictures rather than tells tales, but again sparely, with an almost haiku-like feel. In "Sweetly Undone," a man appreciates his lover: "I watch you at the pool / Slowly undress / Spread your towel on St. Augustine / Lay down and rest / Lay down and rest / Lay down in the sun / Lay down with your top / Sweetly undone." The power of the image is found not so much in the visual presence of the woman, but in its incantatory evocation by the poet. One can almost see his feelings as he describes her.

In "Days" the narrator draws a brief picture of women "laughing in the kitchen / Content with the house / Content with the family, / The candles, food, friends / The music / These December days / The shortest of the year / How beautiful they are." But then he goes on to describe "baking bread / Fresh coffee / And for tonight cold Mexican beer..." With just those two extra words, "for tonight," Baker suddenly widens the perspective: this isn't an unending life of domestic happiness but a frozen moment, with the unspoken implication that tomorrow might bring something quite different, maybe something terrible.

If this sounds more like a poetry review than a music review, that's not an accident. There is definitely sweetness in the music, if not in the singing. But without those pinpoint words, the music wouldn't be much more than pretty guitars backing a strange, honking voice singing wayward, halting melodies. If you like Townes Van Zandt and Gillian Welch and John Prine you'll probably like Sam Baker. There, I said it.

Article Author: Jon Sobel

Jon Sobel is Co-Executive Editor of Blogcritics. As a writer he contributes most often to the Culture section, where he often reviews NYC theater; he also writes a semi-regular review round-up of independent music releases. …

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