The Ida's Touch
When I say Michael Hurley is an original, it's meant both literally and figuratively. The 67-year-old, country-folk oddball is one of the last great ramblin' songwriters, a traveling tunesmith who started out playing the folk scene in the '60s, then stitched his way across the country, living the hobo lifestyle and making albums singular in their silly, stoned, poignant-yet-goofball aesthetic.
That singularity speaks of Michael Hurley the original; the utterly-individual who wasn't just there back-in-the-day, but was his own man making his own music from the get-go. They don't make them like Hurley any more, it's true, but they never made them like Hurley until he came along.
After 40 years of turning out records, Hurley's muse has hardly been dampened. His 18th-ish LP, Ida con Snock, finds ol' Snocko in particularly fine form; sounding, if anything, more graceful and nimble in this new recording of old standards and Hurley familiars.
The album's title is self-descriptive: Ida con Snock collaboration between Hurley and members of the New York slowcore-cum-soft-pop outfit Ida. The album is Hurley's, of course: his record, his songs, his personality, his individuality. But, Ida's presence is felt. Naturally drawn to prettiness, they draw Hurley's often-silly songs further into their implied poignancy; all their tasteful brushed drums and golden globs of slide guitar and glowing strokes of violin amounting to make Ida con Snock Hurley's most musically 'beautiful' album.
The Werewolf Mind
Working over songs from Hurley's sprawling back-catalogue, Ida con Snock polishes them up in shades of fidelity and beauty rarely heard on Hurley records. "Wildegeeses," originally knocked out on 1999's Weatherhole, is transformed from another piece of Hurley anthropomorphism into a sunkissed hymnal unto the planet, its layers of dewy instrumentage having the resonant quality of a wet meadow on a summer morning.
"Hog of the Forsaken," previously played on 1976's Long Journey and 1994's Wolfways, is worked out again, fresh in Hurley's mind after it had a stint on the soundtrack to the television series Deadwood. Here's, its ragged village reel is reeled in, the thick, caustic daubs of fiddle played simply, as if to heighten the sadness that aches through Hurley's tale of the transfiguration of a hog destined for slaughter.
Populated largely by old Hurley tunes and old tunes of the public domain, Ida con Snock will happily serve as an introduction, for many, to the weird world of this strange songsmith. Even if this is one of his least strange, most 'straight' records in a long, straggling, bedraggled, brilliant career.
Record Label: Gnomonsong
Release Date: October 6, 2009
