Pitchfork

For better or worse, there are not too many country concept albums. (Actually, that's probably for the better.) In fact, I can think of exactly zero off the top of my head-- one if you count Nine Inch Nails' The Downward Spiral, which is country only insofar as it sucks.

See, that's the thing: country music sucks. Content to traffic in the same tired subject matter and musical trappings, and aligning itself ever more explicitly with the blandly evil "God and Country" aesthetic favored by suburban Baptist housewives, today's country is unrivaled in the music world for unmitigated suckiness. The only move towards embracing other musical forms that the genre has made lately have been in adopting the saccharine strings and sentiment made popular these days by Celine "Goddamn, I Hate This Motherfucking Song" Dion-- a move in exactly the wrong direction. Certainly anything as high- falutin' (if admittedly old hat) as a concept album is way beyond country's scope.

Which is why we should be thankful that Vic Chesnutt is not exactly a country artist. Certainly he's not a country singer-- not by today's standards anyway. His raspy quaver is a long way off from the smooth pipes of Garth Brooks and his ilk, though it's maybe not as far removed from the nasal delivery of Hank Williams, Sr. Chesnutt's not a country guitarist either, as much as he borrows from the vocabulary of country guitar. So why the hell am I spending so much time talking about country music? Frankly, I'm not sure. But I guess Vic's more country than he is folk, rock or post math-swing. He's certainly perceived as country by a lot of folks. Or at least he was until he went and made a concept album.

The Salesman and Bernadette tells the story of... well, a salesman and a woman named Bernadette. After two listens I'm still unsure of the details. Bernadette is either real or she's imagined. The salesman is either betraying her or he's not-- either way it's clear he's betraying himself. There are airports and junk food, sex and death, and at least one moment of drunken perepeteia on a hotel floor. The album's liner notes instruct us to "infer a lovely story of loss and longing and sloppy satori." And details aside, that's exactly what we get.

Maybe more important, at least in Pitchfork terms, is the music. Chesnutt is joined on this album by an impressively counterintuitive backing band: Lambchop, who supplement the story with their weird brand of country via the Velvet Ungerground. The results are surprising. Lambchop's subtle creepiness helps keep the story from sounding forced, keeps the tempo from dragging, and possibly allows Chesnutt to stretch out a little bit. And though Chesnutt may not have a conventional or pretty voice, he goes balls- out on the record anyway, belting and falsetto-ing and melisma-ing like he's Marvin Gaye.

Time and repeated listens will tell if the story manages to unpack itself and if the songs remain as exciting as they seem now. But after two times through I can't wait to hear it again-- and that's more than I can say for most concept albums, or country albums in general.