Customer Reviews

About to Choke

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I had heard of Vic Chestnut before,,kinda in the wind. Like a ghost horse you can barley see and hear...it was on MTV Unplugged that i saw the band Live do his song Supernatural. It was the standout moment of the show..made you feel like being wrapped in a dream...of pain and heaven. So i finally found his cd About To Choke. Its not easy to describe the feeling i had when listening to it. With the first song Myrtle with the sparceness.. the single guitar playing and the piano in the background you are sucked into a dark force.. one mans crusade of sorrow and southern stories.. Im from Ga..like Chestnut so i felt at home listening to him.I can hear Dylan,alot of that.. but in a good way.His songs are each set up like plays.Like small/epic poems of yearning and country living and the desire to be the man he once was before the horrible drunken car crash that put him into a wheelchair.But he wants no pity.None of that.There is a self-loathing feel to some of his songs..but humour also.Although songs like Swelter are so beautiful its hard not to want to have a drink and cry.But again the sadness is not all bad.There is this feeling that hes going to break free of all the suffering and abuse and just fly away. He is amazing. About To Choke is incredible. And ill be dumnfounded why hes not all over the airwaves.He should own the radio. Instead he spins his tales of misery,death and woe for us out here who are lucky enough to have found him in his southern brilliance.

A must have CD for anyone who enjoys great songwriting. The music is beautiful but sparse, a good backdrop for Chesnutt's powerful voice. Honesty and cynicism, hope and sadness, joy and longing: the range of emotion that come through his voice is astounding. The clever and poetic lyrics bring to mind small-town living, and are entertaining as well as thought provoking. Overall, a beautiful piece of work.

I'm averse to writing "reviews" on Amazon. I loathe the way such terms as "classic" and "genious" are tossed around. Nonetheless, here I am reviewing About To Choke, calling it a classic, describing its creator as a genious. The album's haunting, beautiful, sparse music is on par with Joni Mitchell's Blue. Vic Chesnutt, I should add, is one of the most gifted, intelligent, and kindest songwriters around. One of the underrated greats of our time.

This CD is not currently available via i-Tunes and it is his best IMHO.

I will miss this man's tormented talent. RIP Vic.

Strange. Vic Chesnutt is appreciated for being original. A little out of the ordinary. Something I for one am attracted to. Than why is it that I like this album the best? It is probably the most polished and commercially correct album of the lot. Still, the songs are so very strong and the quality of the album is so consistent, that this album stands the test of time.

I van recommend this album to anyone considering buying ther first 'Chesnutt'. You won't be disappointed.

For the last couple of years, I had thought that "Is the Actor Happy?" (1995) and "The Salesman and Bernadette" (1998) were my favorite Vic Chesnutt albums. It would perhaps make sense that the album VC made in the interim, "About to Choke" (1996), would be of similar quality. And having listened to it another dozen or so times, which you have to do to fully appreciate this artist, I now will admit that the album may be the best of the bunch. The songs "Degenerate" and "Giant Sands" in particular are probably in the Top 10 VC songs of all time. "Little Vacation" is a load of fun to listen to. I agree with the earlier post about the terms "genius" and "classic" being tossed about too often. But the trilogy of "Actor", "Choke" and "Salesman", taken together, in my mind, redefine those terms.

Big biz meets Vic in this career-so-far summation, which includes (mostly) songs familiar to those who have seen him live in the past 9 yrs. - kind of a greatest-hits-in-an-alternate-universe compilation album . . . Not his best, but has wonderful moments, particularly the Casio-at-home performed "Little Vacation", the simplesweet "Tarragon" that sounds like tarragon tastes, the fun "New Town", the honest "Hot Seat", the rockingrollicking "Giant Sands" & the grandiose "See You Around".