Search - Reid Paley :: Lucky's Tune

Music in extremis

John Owen | Salem MA | 12/22/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Reid Paley is an acquired taste, like bourbon and the Stooges. Every time I play this album for people, I get one of two reactions: bemusement at the hideous noise coming at them; or incredulity which changes to devotion after a stanza or two.I was lucky enough to see Reid in his semi-hometown of Pittsburgh, playing to a hometown crowd, and he is riveting. A little man, who does play very very loud, with that awful, filthy voice coming out of that thin body. He sings like a man possessed, luxuriating in the ugliness of his voice and the material he is singing.The songs on Lucky's Tune revolve around two themes: self-loathing and self-loathing. Far from one-dimensional, however, Paley has bile, bitterness, and intelligence to spare in communicating the dark humor underneath the messed-up people that populate his songs. For example:She had blue eyes/and pretty yellow hair/ we drank till quarter after three/ She was a rebel/ she wore no underwear/ she asked what mental illness meant to me.Clever rhymes about being drunk and with crazy women, or being drunk and crazy over a woman, or a dead friend, are Paley's stock-in-trade. Again, it could be one-dimensional, but Paley brings it off convincingly. Sometimes an artist can exemplify a corner of life, without once saying something "realistic." T. Corraghessen Boyle is the closes literary equivalent to Reid Paley, IF T.C. had been Charles Bukowski. A bartender friend of mine once said to me (after I spent a very drunken night crawling up the leg of the luscious Scandanavian women next to me), "There are two kinds of women in this world. Some of them mean trouble, and the rest mean trouble for you." Think about that. You need to check out the beautiful ballad "Time For You," as well as the hateful breakup and drinking songs, "Lazarus in Brooklyn," "My Boyish Heart," and "The Long Haul" if you aren't sure Reid is for you. If you recoil from the rawness, the cheap-porno sheen of his voice and guitar, then forget it. You ain't hep. Your best bet is to check and see if you like the Stooges, the Stones, Rollins, Tom Waits...If this is the case, please do buy the album. The five-star rating might not make sense to you yet, but as soon as you go through a bad breakup, get fired, or find yourself hammered on tequila at 4 A.M. without your wallet, you will understand how perfect Lucky's Tune is."

A post-punk Paley finds his voice, creates solid album

John Owen | 08/15/1999

(4 out of 5 stars)

"After being ahead of his time in Pittsburgh, behind the times in New York, Paley has finally found a real voice (and not one he printed on flyers for The Five for WRCT or WFMU). This is a solid album -- Henry Rollins intensity, Tom Waits gravelly voice, with the simplicity and sentimentality of Billy Bragg. One of the best albums I've heard in a while."