Customer Reviews

Snakebite: Blacktop Ballads and Fugitive Songs

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I've followed Stan Ridgway's career fairly closely, after having had the good fortune to catch a live Wall of Voodoo show in 1981. Let me say this without equivocation. This is Ridgway's best. Period. You can hear echoes of some of his older stuff in these songs, but, even then, it's an improvement. And rest assured, no record company would ever have approved this raw, ideosyncratic brilliance. Thank God for independent labels.

Some highlights: (1) You're Rockin' Chair sounds like a blues classic, with weird dissonance at all levels and near perfect lyrics: (2) Afghan Forklift is like Mark Knopfler meets H.P. Lovecraft meets ... well ... Stan; (3) That Big 5-0 is perhaps the best anthem for middle age I've ever heard--or is it??? I could go on, but trust me. This is as good as it gets.

Stan Ridgway is back with another collection of brilliant vignettes, turning his unflinching eye on the dark side of the American Dream. It's a long one, 16 songs that fill the disc, and right up there among his best.

One of the things you might notice first is that several songs seem to address the demise of his old band Wall of Voodoo. "Talkin' Wall of Voodoo Blues Pt. 1," of course, but "Throw It Away," "My Own Universe" and "Classic Hollywood Ending" seem to be tied in as well. Two of the former band members recently died, and Stan is working through his pent-up feelings after all these years. Of these songs, "Classic Hollywood Ending" is an absolute knock-out, brilliant and moving.

Any Stan Ridgway record tends to be dark, with some dread looming, so the next thing you notice may be a little harder to pick out. 9/11 is an oblique presence -- how could it not be? "Afghan/Forklift," another of the album's strongest songs, features a forklift operator in Arkansas who notices two crates marked Top-Secret, headed for Afghanistan:

"Somethin' in the air, and it's movin' like a southbound train ... the shadows of an ancient flame burn away in time ... some will seek their god from a heaven in the sky, defendin' their affliction with a holy alibi..."

Stan also includes a fantastic cover of a 1969 Mose Allision song, "Monsters of the Id." A pointed comment on right-wing Neanderthals waving flags, it is a sad reminder of how things never seem to change. "Crow Hollow Blues," with Stan on banjo, sounds like an outtake from "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?", from the point of view of a simple-minded but sympathetic prisoner who says "if we made a run fer it, we wouldn't get far." "That Big 5-0" is a high-energy potential hit single about hitting a big milestone on life's highway, something I expect most of us Stan fans can relate to. "Your Rockin' Chair" is a down and dirty blues number with slide guitar and a thinly veiled metaphor -- "the way you rock that chair with me just makes me want some more." "Wake Up Sally" and "King For a Day" are both vivid movie scenes, one about a young hoodlum and his girlfriend running from the law, and the other about a guy whose wife left him, doing an O.J. in a stolen car. There are a couple of tracks that don't work for me at all ("Runnin' With the Carnival" and "Our Manhattan Moment"), but that leaves 14 excellent songs. "God Sleeps in a Caboose" is another of SNAKEBITE'S best, a wistful reflection about "ridin' on that train," the train we all ride. It's the source of that great line -- "this world is old, and this world is mad."

Personally I think BLACK DIAMOND ('95) is Stan's best album of the '90s (see my review). It still sounds every bit as good now as it did in '96 when I first heard it. Comparing SNAKEBITE to BLACK DIAMOND and ANATOMY ('99 -- see my review), it didn't sound quite as powerful as their best moments at first. But I realized that the emotional power of great songs like "Mission Bell" and "Picasso's Tear" from ANATOMY are based largely on nostalgia and regret. SNAKEBITE sounds to me like Stan moving on, keeping up the good fight, creating a new reality, recreating his artistic vision. And we are fortunate that Stan is still singing his blacktop ballads and fugitive songs for all of us fugitives, rebels and idealists in this dark time as we barrel down the highway together.

(verified purchase from CD Baby)

I just got this a couple days ago, have listened to it maybe three times, and already find myself humming his new songs-Wake up, Sally and Throw it away stick, as do virtually all of them. Stan writes with a deadpan accuracy and quiet humor, and wraps these lyrics around and into perfectly produced, gorgeously rich collages of different instruments from flutes to fiddles to understated synthesizers.
Stan is the last of the best of those handful of early eighties alternative songwriters, who, in a more fair and reasonable musical climate, might share the same space in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as Dylan and Springsteen(It's poetic justice that ZZ Top and the likes are there instead).
Yet his canon of music is right there with Zevon, Lloyd Cole, and Frank Black, as genius songwriters with a smaller, but no less serious fan base.
This album overflows with a musical confidence, and has Mr. Ridgway crafting songs just as interesting and satisfying and fresh as Mexican Radio and Drive, She Said, from years gone by.

With his 7th album, "Snakebite", Ridgway serves up another round of his sardonic and peculiar wit in the form of the world's brightest criminal minds and backstreet freaks. His storytelling prowess is still intact after all these years and "Snakebite" is one of his best recordings to date and would sit nicely alongside Ridgway classics like "Big Heat", "Mosquitos" and "Anatomy". I always have my favorites on each Ridgway album and here it would be "Afghan/Forklift", "Running With The Carnival", "That Big 5-O", "Classic Hollywood Ending" and his most confessional song to date, the blistering swamp rock of "Talkin' Wall Of Voodoo Blues, Pt.1" in which he reflects on his career with prior to Wall Of Voodoo, with the band from 77-84 and all the errors and foibles they encountered. "Snakebite" is 16 songs, each with a story to tell, but taken together an impressive work of seamless artistry. If you haven't listened to Stan lately it's time to get back on the bus.

What an amazing record! Full of tunes and stories, not a note, word or sound wasted. Every track is a winner, repeated listening lets each one grow in stature, all except one, Talkin' Wall of Voodoo blues is the standout and grabs you by the throat as soon as you hear it, apart from the driving guitars and drums , its simply the best song about a band since Creque Alley and makes you cry for all the stuff that The Wall of Voodoo might have done if they'd lasted longer.
Highly recommended.

A worthy follow-up to 1999's "Anatomy" and in the same vein as 1995's "Black Diamond", Stan's "Snakebite" is surprisingly lush for such sparse instrumentation. As always, the view of our world as we may (or may not) know it is from a slightly-skewed angle with cinematic imagery and filtered through Stan's sublimely sardonic wit.

Stan manages to pull the greatest performances from not only the supporting musicians, but himself also. His guitar work is clean and crisp, and his harmonica is as deeply soulful and eloquent as his lyrics. The sound is surprisingly intricate and full, but without being pretentious or overdone. While the overall tone can be categorized as Country, it is heavily inflected with smatterings of Jazz, Folk, Rock and occasionally unusual instrumentation to create the genre-busting sound that Stan's regular listeners have become familiar with.

Stan strives to describe his characters and their stories with economy of words and abundance of imagery. Stan succeeds in both on "Snakebite". Once again, we get some of the most colorful characters that you could ever know. But this time, as with "Black Diamond", many of these stories are deeply personal for Stan, and in "Talkin' Wall of Voodoo Blues, Pt. I" downright autobiographical.

Been listening to Stan's new one for close to a week now...

Swampy and greasy and, alternately, poignant and eloquent. Stan has managed to make more great music that this time is somewhat stripped-down and yet, still quite intricate. I'd heard 3 or 4 of these songs in a live context about a year and a half ago (Wake Up Sally, Running With The Carnival, God Sleeps In A Caboose, and, I think, Monsters Of The Id). Those performances back in November 02 were my favorite of the times I've seen Stan live... precisely because, like Snakebite, they were stripped-down (not much electric guitar... often just Stan solo with a harmonica, beat box and acoustic guitar). The record approaches the feel of those performances and that's a good thing.

The songs and the performances on this record are strong. Although largely more acoustic and bluesy than earlier work, the Stan-isms are still present in the background ("tape loops," "shovels and rakes," "trash compacter," "popcorn box," etc.); they are there as supporting players, helping set the mood for the stories told in the songs, which would work just as well in a live setting with minimal accompaniment. The songs are so strong, in fact, that it's hard to say which ones I can call my favorites... Into The Sun, God Sleeps In A Caboose, My Own Universe, and Talking' Wall Of Voodoo Blues Pt. 1 stand out as of my most recent listens.

Also glad to hear that, as always, Stan can cover another artist's song and really make it his own (which is really the only way one should cover a song)... I've never really been a big fan of Mose Allison's vocal delivery but Stan takes Mose's song Monsters Of The Id and fixes that for me.

Others have already written elsewhere about how great the harmonica playing is on this record... I agree... just beautiful. And Stan also demonstrates some of his best guitar playing ever on this disc.

For those in the know, have a listen to Your Rockin' Chair; could this one have been taken from the proposed but never released Drywall album Music To Screw To? And Triangle Head is back for another visit in That Big 5-0... and it's nice to see he's mellowed.

What else can I say... another great record by a great singer/songwriter/composer.

Of the 16 tracks on this album, I have to say 6 or 7 of them are among the best songs Ridgway's ever written (solo or with Wall of Voodoo).

Highlights:

Into the Sun
Afghan Forklift
King for a Day
Monsters of the Id
That Big 5-0
God Sleeps in a Caboose
My Own Universe
Talkin' Wall of Voodoo Blues Pt. 1

Another great offering from a legendary artist that too few people know about.

Great CD. Unfortunately in the homogenous age of radio that we live in you will probably never get a chance to hear anything from this album on the radio. Stan throws smatterings of country, bluegrass and blues into quite a few of these songs resulting in a CD which cannot be classified as anything that a radio programmer would feel would fit on his station's format. That says more about the sorry state of radio than it does about Stan's work. This is a wonderful piece of work which should be better known than it is. If you're familiar with his work you'll enjoy it. If you're not familiar with Stan but are looking for something "brand new, special and unique" give it a shot, you will be pleasantly surprised by what you hear.

This has to be one of the best CD's I have ever heard. There is not a song on it that is not a gem. Stan Ridgway has evolved into one of the best solo preformers from the 1980 era. If you have not had a chance to hear any of his solo work since his Mexican radio days with Wall of Voodoo this is a great place to start. It is one amazing CD. Some of the best original music out there today.