Monday, April 24, 2006

Jeffrey Foucault

My mopester du jour is Jeffrey Foucault. Foucault has the kind of melancholy, world-weary voice that makes me remember why I love music. It’s perfectly imperfect; a craggy, raspy, soulful mess of a thing that conjures up images of tarpaper shacks and dirt roads that lead to nowhere, a less dissolute, slightly more tuneful Tom Waits as a Mississippi Delta front porch balladeer. His 2004 album Stripping Cane was one of my favorites from that year, and he has a new one (Ghost Repeater) due out in a few weeks. Stripping Cane’s title track perfectly captures his songwriting sensibilities. There is goodness and sweetness in the world, but you have to work hard to find it.

“Drunk Lullaby,” which is on the self-titled album by Redbird (Foucault’s collaboration with Peter Mulvey and Kris Delmhorst), is Exhibit A in how to write a song. Through striking imagery, through indirection, Foucault picks off the scab of a wound and exposes what it’s like to hit bottom, to lose the only thing that made life worth living.

The show is all over
The house lights are down
I got paid and I feel alright
So let's go downtown
I'll buy you a drink
I'll be broke by tomorrow
But I'm flush for tonight

And the moon is a beat up old record
This town is a broke down hi-fi
And it all just keeps on spinning
And I don't hear a thing
But your name for a drunk lullaby

I've got a room at the top of the stairs
The trucks roll by all through the night
And if I was brave I'd be gone by now
If I was a fool I'd keep holding on tight

And the moon is a beat up old record
This town is a broke down hi-fi
And it all just keeps on spinning
And I don't hear a thing
But your name for a drunk lullaby

She stands at the window with a lit cigarette
Her hair falling loose down her back
And it catches the sunlight and it shines like a halo might
Before someone painted it black

And the moon is a beat up old record
This town is a broke down hi-fi
And it all just keeps on spinning
And I don't hear a thing
But your name for a drunk lullaby
-- Jeffrey Foucault, “Drunk Lullaby”

1 comment:

woodsmeister said...

Foucault has a new one coming out this month, entitled Ghost Repeater, on Signature Sounds.

Here's a snippet from the title cut:

"But the movie is over
The theater is empty
The credits are starting to roll
The wages of sin
Don't adjust for inflation
It's a buyer's market
When you sell your soul."