Search - Chris Knox :: Almost

The best songwriter you've never heard...

Sad Mommy | New Jersey | 12/05/2000

(4 out of 5 stars)

"When I finished my first listening to this particular Chris Knox effort, I thought, "What an appropriate title, ALMOST". Compared to Knoxs earlier solo work as well as his Tall Dwarfs discs, (with fellow New Zealander Alec Bathgate) ALMOST was well, just that, almost. A near miss. There were two things about it that I noticed right away, the first being it's length. Only ten songs. Knoxs previous recordings were always loaded, averaging a minimum of fourteen songs (CROAKER), with some going as high as twenty-one (SONGS OF YOU AND ME & POLYPHOTO, DUCK SHAPED PAIN & GUM). OK so it's short, I thought. So what. Ten Chris Knox songs are better than fifty from most other artists so I could deal. The second was more important. There was no KILLER cuts here. The thing that fasinates me about this guys work is that every Chris Knox album (and I 've got them all) has AT LEAST 5 or 6 tracks that stay with you like a kick in the gut. Songs with raw power that linger in the mind and seem to get better and better with each listening. Not ALMOST. I listened to it a second time and thought, "Well, it's ten soild songs and still an excellent CD even if it's not quite what I've come to expect". Every artist is entitiled to something a little sub-par, especially when the standard of quality has been so high for so long. I tried not to let it get me down but, it was hard. After all my favorite artist had, in my eyes, stumbled for the first time. He'd put out a CD that I only liked and didn't love. I know it happens to them all eventually but, I couldn't help feeling that there had to be some sort of reason or explaination. Was he sick? Hmmm, I'll never know. Did he hack it out for the money? Doubt it, since I'm the only one (in the States anyway) buying his stuff. Was he (GASP) losing it? I shudder to think. About 3 weeks later I popped ALMOST into my CD player again, and opened up the CD case to read some of his lyrics (which are always second to none) and LOW AND BEHOLD, there was my explaination! According to the liner notes, all the songs on ALMOST were short listed to appear on various other albums from 1989 to 1995. Knox had finally decided to record them and explains "Cos it's so rough and less than full album length, think of it as an ALMOST album". "A collection of hi-quality also-rans", it said in small type on the inside of the front cover. Ahhhh, now it all made sense! There was then a brief breakdown of the orgins of the songs and the albums they were SUPPOSED to appear on. This shead a whole new light on my view of ALMOST and deepened my belief that Chris Knox is one of the most talented songwriters producing today. This is a CD of throw-aways and the fact that these songs DIDN'T make it on to those earlier albums is really a testament to those that DID because, none of them sound the least bit like throw-aways. Usually when a musician starts releasing songs discarded from past records it's obvious why these songs were disgarded in the first place, (sometimes painfully so) and the whole thing reeks of greedy record labels cranking out product to pad their bottom line. That's not the case here. Songs like PESTICIDE, TINA AND THE EMPORERS NEW STATUS are good and deserved to be recorded and released. No Killer cuts but, all ten are MUCH better then what you'd expect from a CD of "ALMOSTS"."