Robbie And The Rabbi
Weds., June 1
Robbie Fulks has to wait a while before he can answer a question; that's because he's looking for the gate for the plane back to Chicago. He does that a lot. Despite taking a break between 2001's Couples in Trouble and this year's Georgia Hard, Fulks has kept busy touring and showing up on the occasional tribute album. He didn't have to worry about some other Robbie Fulks making the scene. Among the hipster-country masses, Fulks is unique in his dedication to pushing the limits of his songwriting and musicianship.
This has resulted in Fulks going from alt-country to roots-rocker and back again in the past decade-while cramming in plenty of misadventures in the recording industry. Along the way, Fulks has become grandly unpredictable. The songs on Georgia Hard range from good humor worthy of Roger Miller to gorgeous goth-folksiness worthy of all those anonymous dead minstrels who got ripped off by Nick Cave.
"If I had a niche or a market," Fulks notes, "I might stick to it. I've had some incentive to do the same thing twice, but I've always enjoyed singers who don't do that. My first record was an explicit manifesto. If I was going to add anything to country music when I stepped into the fray, it had to be in my own voice, and not pretending to be a Bible-thumper, or anything else that I wasn't."
These past few years weren't a time for reflection, though. Georgia Hard isn't any more calculated than any Fulks album that's come before-although his voice has certainly grown into a perfect country pitch. The material is the typically broad brush that Fulks has relied upon to keep any album from settling into thematic mire.
Fulks wasn't laboring over what could be counted as a comeback, either. "I always write for the record I'm going to make," he explains. "There's no pressure at all. I just sit and write. After spending a week writing a countrypolitan song, then I'm ready to write a murder ballad. It's a matter of making things up for my pleasure."
Which brings us to Fulks' impressive refusal to ever package himself as another tortured troubadour. "My songs aren't direct expression," he notes. "They're not venting. I'm not trying to get some kind of evil beast out of me. I guess everybody's got murder and suicide and despair in them, but I try not to exploit that in a song. I'm as dark as anybody-but not when talking on the phone to a stranger."
If Georgia is Hard, the world's Imperfect: whereas Fulks is a protean Puritan, a musical shape-shifter whose only consistency lies in the quality and discipline as opposed to the style and sheen of his material, Peter Himmelman's music has been more hit and miss.
But Imperfect World is Himmelman's first great record since his days fronting Sussman Lawrence (whose complete works, incidentally, were recently reissued on CD). Of course, that "great" distinction doesn't necessarily include Himmelman's work as a Raffi-like kiddie singer-which mandates an additional 11 a.m. show as part of his upcoming Knitting Factory appearance.
Maybe that sideline is where Himmelman got the happy temperament to handle a backhanded compliment. Imperfect World is full of impressively grand twangy rock. It's a nice change from a solo career with randomly great moments-and others where Himmelman has been emotive, or puerile-sentimental, to a fault.
"I don't know about that," Himmelman replies, "but this record was created to not go into that direction. If I have an electric guitar in hand, it causes a different kind of song to occur. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't tapping into too many maudlin and earnest thoughts. Another big difference is that I didn't hire another guy to play guitar. A lot of guys can play guitar a lot slicker than I do."
That explains Himmelman's backing band, the Flying Baby, an Israeli rock band that might even share Himmelman's faith as an Orthodox Jew. This guy isn't some Keystone Kabbalah follower, though. Himmelman's inaccessible on the Sabbath, and won't get caught enjoying a cheeseburger. That's not exactly a selling point in a pop-culture world that's spent four years mocking John Ashcroft's religion.
"I'm so insulated in my community and my family," he notes, "that it's hard to say if that's been a problem for me. I'd imagine that my whole life paradigm differs a great deal from what I consider the cult-like lemmings of popular culture. It would be more of a compliment if I did encounter a problem. Someday, if people discover me more, we can engage in a dialogue."