Ghetto Bells

Vic Chesnutt

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 22, 2005)
• Original Release Date: March 22, 2005
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: New West Records
• ASIN: B0007OP144
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #134,716 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
Vic Chesnutt has released a dozen albums in 15 years, and there's not many artists operating at that speed. However, Chesnutt warrants it; the pace simply matches his artistic growth. Ghetto Bells has a powerful resonance that reveals itself slowly. A couple of seven-minute pieces are the heart of the album, both moving forward slowly, but ever so purposefully. One of them, "Rambunctious Cloud," is further sweetened by the presence of Van Dyke Parks on accordion (who appears throughout, on various keyboards) and a staggering guitar solo from Bill Frisell. It's a mark of Chesnutt's singular songwriting prowess that such a stellar band of disparate players came together, full of sympathetic invention, confidence and grace. -- David Greenberger

Product Description
Prolific, profound, and ever full of potty-mouthed piss-and-vinegar - Vic Chesnutt is Prometheus in a wheelchair with a battered guitar – a freak-folk trailblazer, spilling his heart and soul and spleen into the microphone, with a sly drawl, dripping humid, Southern gothic imagery in calamitous, sometimes comic songs worthy of a Greek tragedy.

Vic’s new CD (and 12th album to date), Ghetto Bells, matches the poetic power of his words with some of the most elegantly simpatico backing he’s ever been blessed with – including jazz icon Bill Frisell on guitars; legendary writer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist Van Dyke Parks on piano, accordion and organ; Don Heffington of Lone Justice and the Jayhawks on drums and percussion; classically trained session-man Dominic Genova on double bass; sweetheart/sidekick/sounding board Tina Chesnutt on electric bass; and newcomer-singer-songwriter Liz Durrett on exquisite backing vocals.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Masterful fusion of great musicians, March 23, 2005

By	Aleida - See all my reviews

This album sounds like a Vic Chesnutt album, with the inimitable vocals and dark-green sounding guitar but it also sounds like a Bill Frisell album as the man's sunsetty guitars perfectly weave through the songs adding dimensions. While Silver Lake had a very good backing band- here the band is not so much backing but adding their own very distinct and musical talents to the mix. Van Dyke Parks accordion (concertina?), string arrangements sound like open spaces or parisian streets. Vic's niece Liz Durrett's layered vocals on "What Do You Mean?" sound like ghosts in a southern forest. The album is well-produced but not over-produced.
Above all- if you like Vic's sparse earlier recordings you should love this as all the musicians add to the songs AND if you like Silver Lake you should love this as the recording is rich sounding. Besides, what other album would have a line about Neopolitan ice cream in a song called "Vesuvius"?

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A New Classic....Ghetto Bells, March 22, 2005

By	Larry Joe Sullivan "Songcatcher" (Kansas City ,Mo. USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Vic Chesnutt has created a work of art. Like a fine novel, or a film destined to be a classic. With every listen, the characters come to life and the soundtrack is the soundtrack to your life...real or imagined.
"Little Caesar" refers to the obvious leader of the (free?) world..and "Forthright" leads you to a kinder, gentler place...where sincerety is the rule, not the exception.
Excellent imagery abounds with every note, and word of every song, written by a down to earth dreamer. Vic Chesnutt will gain many new fans, with this new release. Deservedly so...
A FIVE STAR recording if ever there was...

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Chesnutt's Sublime Bells, March 31, 2005

By	Juan Mobili (Valley Cottage, NY USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

When people like Michael Stipe -"Top 10 finest songwriters today: Vic Chesnutt"- or Tom Waits -"He's fragile like Neil Young, Daniel Johnston and Aaron Neville, songs like strange things you find on the ground"- have this much praise to offer for a fellow musician, I think it is alright for those among us, who long to be moved by great songs, to stop and listen.
Chesnutt new album, Ghetto Bells, is a fine place to start, perhaps a perfect one. At least to me, it conjures up the bare poetic soul of his early classics -"West Of Rome," "Little," the Stipe-produced, or "Is The Actor Happy"- at the same time that it reminds me of the sophisticated musical vision of his amazing 2003's "Silver Lake."
For those who have already fallen under Chesnutt's spell, saying this much will be sufficient or, perhaps, unnecessary. The man has proven to be such uncompromising talent enough times to justify the purchase of his works "sight-unseen." For those who may not know them well, the rest of these words -I hope- may be useful to convince them of purchasing this album.
First and foremost, his lyrics -at once ironic, deeply emotive and deceptively simple-- deserve a place along the great songwriters of popular music. I'm thinking of people like Jimmy Webb, Springsteen or Leonard Cohen, none of whom are references in style, but a sign of Chesnutt's poetic stature.
Listen to songs like "Virginia" -a moving confession of troubled love for his mother- or "Ignorant People" -in which he expresses such sincere gratitude for the life he gets to live- as fine examples of his depth of feeling. Both particularly poignant when you realize that he has been paralyzed as the result of a car accident in 1983, when he was only 18. Both infused with courageous acceptance, and not a single gram of sentimentality.
Musically speaking, although his songs remain faithful to authentic simplicity, these melodies are utterly moving. In addition to the songs mentioned before, I'm thinking of "Forthright," "Rambunctious Cloud" and the incomparable "Vesuvius."
Of course, it does not hurt to have the assistance of Van Dyke Park on piano, accordion and organ -plus the exquisite strings arrangement in "Virginia" - nor the unpredictable beauty of Bill Frisell's guitar, or the masterful drumming of Don Heffington.
Finally, and perhaps the most impressive surprise of Ghetto Bells, is Vic's voice, which it managed to achieve a vulnerability nothing less than courageous, beautiful in its disregard to be perfect and most interested in connecting deeply with the listener.
As Van Dyke Parks said, "Add Vic Chesnutt to your short-list of great Southern Writers. A true Romantic poet! In his works is an unsparing candor, leaving the casual listener amazed, deluged and wrung out again-refreshed with truly informed optimism and shoots of ironic humor, sprouting up in most unexpected places."
This is an extraordinary album, a work that offers hard-earned joy, humble wisdom and and immense relief amidst the caution and self-consciousness so prevalent in recent recordings from respected and more famous artists today.