Singer/songwriter Vic Chesnutt, always one to maintain a prodigious release schedule, experiences a rebirth with his eleventh full-length album, North Star Deserter.
Recorded in Montreal with Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band and various other contributors as his backing band, the album has a raw immediacy that his recent releases have lacked. Despite the large cast of contributors, the songs have a stripped-down and brittle feel, even when the Silver Mt. Zion boys add their group harmonies to “Glossolalia” and walls of wailing guitar distortion submerge his fragile vocals in “Everything I Saw.”
As always, Chesnutt is an arrestingly vivid songwriter, but whereas his last few records were so polished and richly produced that his words were easy to overlook, the harshly rough-around-the-edges tone of North Star Deserter provides a match for his bleakly self-searching narratives. Chesnutt is at his best when allowed to assume center stage and let his wit and imagination run free; the emphasis on presenting his songs in their skeletal forms allows them to maintain their edge.
In that respect, it’s the most urgent-sounding album he has made since the mid-‘90s, and is full of the uncomfortable energy that made him so fascinating in the first place.
– Matt Fink
Vic Chesnutt: www.vicchesnutt.com
Constellation Records: www.cstrecords.com