Stan Ridgway's solo albums have been getting more relaxed over the years. Whereas his early post-Wall Of Voodoowork sounded heavily structured and painstakingly produced, his recentwork has become looser...the edges are getting rougher, his lyrics andmusic are getting both darker AND sillier (often during the samesong).[self-released]
Drywall —a pet project consisting of Ridway,drummer Rick King and long-time collaborator Pietra Wexstun—takesall these trends to the extremes, but only about half of thetime. The new (and, for some of us, "long-awaited") CD opens witha joyous zydeco romp about a barbeque party populated with thenastiest—yet cuddliest—of all inbred middle America stereotypes. Itcloses with a seamless reconstruction of George Bush speeches thatwould bring happy tears to a culture-jammer's eyes. In between,though, it zig-zags through a playlist of uneven songs about war, thePope, sinking ships, ghosts, and several introspective, soul-searchingmeditations. Half of them feature Wexstun's wonderfully gratingand unorthodox keyboards ("Fortune Cookies," "That Big Weird Thing")along with some truly inspired instrumentation andstream-of-consciousness rants in the best Ridway tradition while theothers are so gosh-darned straight-forward and pedestrian that they'repainfully bland in comparison ("Abandon Ship," "Wargasm 2005"). The album reaches great heights and forgettable depths, and it fails inthe end to give any sort of "average" impression: it's bothwonderful and bad. It's two albums in one! Unfortunatelyyou can't buy one without the other.
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