I thought it might be fun to devote a page of my site to a couple of albums I really like, so if you've clicked here, that's what you're reading about.

I used to go to a lot of Burnley's performances. He wasn't really up for rocking out for a buncha party people. As for me, I'm used to having people throw or pour beer on me while I play, and if it doesn't happen, I worry that I might be losing the popular touch. So in some sense I'm the worst situated to comment on the music of Burnley Vest, who is a soft-spoken fellow and the closest thing I know to a musical genius. But comment I will.

I was given a copy of Burnley's cassette "The Strange Tactics of Escapism." At first I thought it was goofy. It had corny rhymes like "Don't just sit there admiring some persona/click out a beat with penny and Corona". In fact, I think that's the first line of the first song. The whole thing was recorded in a little apartment (I think--I think it was the place he had at Manhattan and Devoe, in pre-hip Williamsburg. It's pink.) so the drums and things are sometimes tentative, as if he was trying not to wake the neighbors.

But there was a song on it called "Gnome Is A Train Ride Away" that I really liked for some reason. In all this home-studio teeniness, it sounded big--weirdly, it reminded me of listening to "The Unforgettable Fire" in my Cutlass in 1985...in a good way. Anyway, I played the tape a lot and other songs on it worked their way into my likeyness, the way embarrassing Beach Boys material like "Had To Phone Ya" starts to sound great when you feel like you know Brian, Dennis and Carl; when you can sort of feel that studio carpet underfoot. So, I got hooked basically. At that point I thought the line about penny and Corona was just brilliant. Don't you think so? It's good, at least.

There were other terrific songs on it too. First of all, the chilling "Gilbey's Dry Gin". It's just a song about feeling bad about drinking alone and liking it. Nowadays Burn drinks like booze is (somewhat tasty) kryptonite and I've never heard that his habits were ever otherwise. But listen to this song and you'll be surprised he's even alive. I also love the one about palmetto bugs, and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention "Insight and Innuendo" though I think that title isn't the greatest, since the words aren't in the song. I have no idea what it should be called, just not that. It's a great song, and in a way it's Burn's equivalent of a shot across the bow: really complicated and moody, and unsatisfying in the best kind of way. It subverts your expectations while replacing them with better ones.

"Wooden Nickels for Mr Clean" would be a huge hit in a world where people liked banjos and treated each other with respect and awe. And the bass line of "Gnome" is just amazingly melodic and dramatic, full of little hooks that stick in your ear and stay there.

And finally Burnley decided it was worthy of digitizing. I think he got a deal actually. He was working on a new record that involved other musicians (I think Burn is all by himself on "Strange Tactics"). It sounded like a lot of trouble and I couldn't see what the fuss was all about. At this point in my life Burnley appeared to be a talented person who had no idea what people wanted, and as much as I had come to like a few of his songs, I thought he was probably wasting his time, because who has time to want something they didn't know they wanted?

But I was happy to receive the new record with it's un-illuminating but attractive tri-fold brochure along with the satisfyingly orange cd version of "Strange Tactics of Escapism."

Now: As much as I had come to like "The Strange Tactics Of Escapism", (And I still do, I listen to it all the time), I wasn't prepared for "Laundromat." The title is so...nothing. Why? "Laundromat"? But it's a brilliant record from start to finish. Where "Strange Tactics" is sort of front-loaded, in that the best songs are loaded toward the front, "Laundromat" is great from the start but the songs that stick in your head don't come until later. It just gets better and better as it goes on. Strings are heard all over the place. It lets you get into Burn world. Though some songs at the beginning are really nice: "Mutual Admiration Society" is probably Burn's cleverest song, and if he were ever to produce singlehandedly a PSA about what the "creative" life is like, this would be it. But the record takes a jump into greatness when you hit song number 4, "Pick The Nightshade", which is the opposite of the music on the radio. It's a mostly acoustic slow jam about (I think) self-destructive women, and the record continues its king of the mountain ststus on track 5, "She's A Safe Place" which is so obviously about his wife, and if you've never had one, or if you have, that's a very difficult subject to write about. Then you get a few songs that move the narrative along in a most appealing way.

But then with track 10, "Something About Your Face", this homemade record goes over the top. It contains the line "A sweet, anesthetic grace," and that's an apt description. The song is not unlike a collaboration between Elton John and Pink Floyd without the deeply personal pretensions of either, and I just love it (especially the final coda, which is like somebody dictating an epitaph). It's rude to make comparisons, really, and I'm only doing it for fun: this might be Burn's most personal sounding song. And I like the next song even more: "Laundromat". When I used to see see the band live, I remember liking the line "...since I saw you at the lobster stand/been love for you", and I like it here. (For a wordy fellow, when he sings the word "love" it sounds like somebody who knows what he's talking about.) This song is clever like "Mutual Admiration Society" but with something darker mixed in.

Then you have what I think of as the pause of "Thank You Benjamin", an unsentimental elegy about Benjamin who was Benjamin Smoke, Burn's former housemate, who has been elegized by big small filmmakers and such. It's good, but it's a pause. But after this you get a song that I'm surprised hasn't been embraced by fans of Lou Reed, Jackson Browne, Ric Ocasek, Elliott Smith, Brian Wilson, Emitt Rhodes, The Plimsouls, Van Halen, Thin Lizzy, and the Hoosier Hot-Shots. "Bottoming Out In California" is also like a Bruce Springsteen song done by somebody who basically has zero to do with The Boss. It's about some car-culture misfits, but instead of singing their praises it sort of frames their life like a comic strip. The fact that it brings together the lines "Bellicose minors and surf eternal" and ""made giant asses of themselves: to wit" only makes me like it more and more every time I hear it. (It also contains the word "smarty-pantses.") I honestly can't believe nobody nominated this song for a grammy.

The album closes with a little piece of theremin-ish prettiness, called "Agricultural Spraying", I find I like it more if I imagine agricultural spraying when I hear it. It's nice, kind of like how you have to be nice and say nice things after something that really matters. It's not the song you're going to remember. It's sort of a recessional, it kind of lets you go, the way when you say bye after something kind of intense the goodbye is just a wave toward the driveway.

At any rate, this record--"Laundromat" by Burnley Vest, is terrific, and I would not be at all surprised if more and more people picked up on it until it was a pretty well-known thing and not my little secret anymore.

Yours,
David Rhoden