Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Album IV. Good songs, questionable production. `, May 26, 2002
After hitting it big with "Dead Skunk", somebody got the bright idea that Loudon could be a "hit machine". This would lead to disaster over the course of the next three albums, and on this album it's not hard to see why."A.M. World", "Clockwork Chartreuse" and "Nocturnal Stumblebutt" are hammered to incomprehensibility with heavy-handed production values. Loudon acknowledged this himself with his later live album, "A Live One" where he sings and plays "Clockwork" and "Stumblebutt" solo. (You can also get a cleaner version of "A.M. World" from the BBC album.) And yet. Despite this. Well, this is an album of "Fabulous Songs". "The Swimming Song" must be Loudon's most covered song; and the man-in-black himself (Johnny Cash) covered "The Man Who Couldn't Cry". And "I Am The Way" has been in the news over the past few years because it was plagiarized by an English songwriter. (The song itself is a direct lift of a Woody Guthrie song; his estate did the suing.) Even the "throwaways" on this album are '70s Loudon at his rakish best: "Bell Bottom Pants" (which can be sung again, these days) and "Down Drinking At The Bar" (though "A Live One", again, has the better version) are fun, though apparently not enough to capture the ears of a nation expecting another "Dead Skunk". His collaborations with then wife Kate McGarrigle are extremely enjoyable, with the production of "Come A Long Way" being among the best on the album and "Dilated To Meet You" capturing =perfectly= the emotions and fatigue that only expectant parents in the last hours of pregnancy can feel. The last song is possibly my favorite lullaby ever, being exhortations to "shut up and go to bed", in a variety of ways. In the liner notes, Loudon confesses that it's himself he's talking to, making this a sort of insomniac's lullaby. It's an overall good album marred by some dubious production choices. And it would be a while before Loudon produced another this solid. (The jokey "Unrequited" was next, followed by the now-extinct "Final Exam" and "T-Shirt", followed by a lot of moving from label-to-label.)
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A flawed Gem , but it sparkles nonetheless, September 2, 2003
I first heard LW3, while attending college in 1972 . Karen, an intriguing lady of many talents from Yonkers made Turkish coffee and played Album II for me. I was hooked.
Thing about Loudon is you either love him, or you don't. By the measure of his financial success, the few fans he has are zealots-take a look at the reviews here at Amazon. These people LOVE the man.
I am proud to say I too am a Loudon zealot. Why? He's a damn fine songwriter, with a rapier-like wit and a good ear for a catchy tune. He has a particular talent for weaving the threads of melody, lyric and subject into a wonderful tapestry of song. He does this several times on `Attempted Moustache'.
Loudon's choice of subject (i.e., random violence in *A Clockwork Chartreuse*) many times is off-color, but always interesting. That's why some folk find his songs silly or self-absorbed. Indeed some of them are. Those of us who have followed LWIII for years have gone thru his many tragedies and few triumphs right alongside him. Listening to his painful and funny songs about divorce made mine almost endurable.
Loudon also rejoices in Life, as he does in the opening cut, `The Swimming Song, the perfect example of what Amazon reviewer and Loudon zealot, the aeolian kid', says is a song "you can't get it out of your head and keep on singing it to yourself". I hear Swimming Song and I'm humming it the entire day.
*The Man Who Couldn't Cry* is poignant, sad, describing Loudon's version of Tull's `all time loser'. Yes, Johnny Cash did record this song. As familiar with prison songs as he is, it's hard to imagine The Man in Black singing "he was beaten, bullied and buggered, and made to make license plates" with dignity.
If this disc has a flaw, it is that it was slapped together in Nashville over a three-day period with session musicians not familiar with `the Loudon Sound'.
Truer words were never spoken by Blake Watson, another Amazon reviewer, when he says "even the "throwaways" on this album are '70s Loudon at his rakish best:" *Down Drinking in the Bar* is classic LWIII.
*Bell Bottom Pants* very 70s, is like a fungus. It grows on you.
The aeolian kid captured precisely what the song `Liza' did to me. Like it did to the Kid, It "seeped into my soul, and stayed there - digging down deep, taking root." For years I absolutely hated that song, wincing as I heard it. But as time went on, I began to appreciate Loudon's creative gift of witty verse in a sing-song mantra, like an Eastern holy man might pray to his Higher Power.
It's this multi-dimensional aspect of the Loudon Wainwright experience that is so appealing. You may not like the song today, but in a few years you just might
If Loudon's new to you, this is the disc to start with.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Mustache ride, June 29, 2005
It's only 1973 and Loud-o is already on his fourth and arguably most accomplished LP. Loudon's first two albums were largely solo, acoustic affairs, an event that fans still consider to be a blessing. After all, a singer-songwriter is at his most effective in an intimate setting, right? Maybe, maybe not. His next album was to be about 50-50, half-electric, half-acoustic.
On "Attempted Mustache", Loud-o goes balls out with a band who sound somewhat reserved in the mix, but curiously pissed off when you really listen to how hard they're playing. Mr. Wainwright disagrees about the mix, thinking it doesn't do justice to his vocals. He has a point, as his words have always been at the forefront of what any student of language has to say. But despite a larger vocal presence, his rhyme still hits hard.
This record is at times raw and reckless, and still somehow poignant and touching. His ironic mean streak comes though loud and clear on "Clockwork Chartreuse", a vicious rocker and sly nod to the similarly-titled Stanley Kubrick film, while his softer, more gentle persona still rings through with tongue-in-cheek, yet heartfelt songs to his recently born children. "Nocturnal Stumblebutt" may seem like a tribute to late-nighters everywhere but is, in fact, about a desperate search for cigarettes in the middle of the night whilst trying not to disturb a sleeping mate. "Down Drinking at the Bar" is an anthem for anyone who has ever cared about an individual more interested in consuming a glass of beer at the local watering hole than their suitor. Hardly the stuff of a typical early-70s singer-songwriter. Loud-o's original version of "The Man Who Couldn't Cry" makes its debut here, a tune covered effectively many years later by Johnny Cash, but Wainwright's rendition may have the edge after all.
Do yourself or a friend a favor and add this record to your collection. Fans of intelligent, clever and even smirky folk-pop will treasure it.
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