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Vic Chesnutt - Drunk (1992)

Alternative Rock | Urban Folk | 2004 | New West Records - Remastered with bonustracks | NW6055

On his third, and maybe most conceptually complete, album, Vic Chesnutt emerges as that rare kind of artist who can see left into the living room of small-town America. Drunk opens with one of Chesnutt's more overtly hook-oriented songs, the punchy "Sleeping Man," which also appears later in the album as a slightly twangier reprise, and is a fine commentary on the insatiable hunger for human spectacle that plagues American culture. "One of Many" is a bleak tale of murder and execution that finds Chesnutt truly at the top of his game lyrically and melodically.

A fine example of Chesnutt's songcraft is the plaintive narrative "When I Ran Off and Left Her," which is indicative of his style in that its laid-back delivery masks a certain amount of tension and paranoia. A consistent theme on Drunk, as well as in Chesnutt's other work, is transition -- whether escaping or just moving -- to someplace else. Very few artists can communicate these kinds of themes as eloquently and as uniquely as Chesnutt, and Drunk is a fine example of how he can turn seemingly self-absorbed songs into something strangely universal. The distorted, guttural title cut and the bouncy "Super Tuesday" offer further proof of Chesnutt's impressive ability to evoke different moods. In the end, it is probably that ability which makes his genius the most readily apparent.

Matt Fink - allmusic.com

Released barely a year after West of Rome but recorded with an almost entirely different cast of musicians (only Scott Stuckey remains, promoted from engineer to producer), Drunk is further proof of the remarkable creative streak Vic Chesnutt was running in the early '90s. The album was primarily recorded over the course of a three-day weekend at a rural farmhouse owned by Stuckey's aunt, with Chesnutt playing guitar and multi-instrumentalist Rob Veal playing nearly everything else, giving the album the same consistency of sound and vision as Chesnutt's debut, Little, but with a newfound rock & roll directness. Chesnutt's first album with as many electric guitars as acoustic, Drunk features some of his finest songwriting, particularly on the opening rocker, "Sleeping Man," the catchiest and most memorable song Chesnutt had yet recorded, and a simply lovely musical setting of Stevie Smith's poem "One of Many." (In a bit of a cheat, "Sleeping Man" is reprised toward the album's end, the exact same recording fortified with overdubbed vocals by Syd Straw and slide guitar from John Keane.)

Other highlights include the goofy "Super Tuesday," a brief workout for Fender Rhodes and ukulele, and "When I Ran Off and Left Her" and "Kick My Ass," two songs that show how even more pointedly autobiographical Chesnutt's lyrics were becoming. Chesnutt has said that the album's title refers to his own level of inebriation during the sessions, which he refers to in the scribbled liner notes as "a party for three days," but this is ironically his most focused work so far.

Drunk was Chesnutt's first record for the major-label-affiliated Caroline Records, yet it seemed to pass under the radar compared to his earlier indie releases; it was reissued in 2004 by New West, with the addition of nine bonus tracks recorded between 1992 and 1994, including the beautifully affecting "Lillian Gish," a live take on Bob Dylan's "I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine," and an early version of "Gravity of the Situation," from 1995's Is the Actor Happy?

Stewart Mason - allmusic.com

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