David Baerwald
Triage

There are albums where before talking about the music, one must recount the strength, the intensity that is both a result of and a reflection of a soul devoid of any filter, hitting the listener's brain like few others, and when encountered, they stick with you for life. This happens to many with Nick Drake's spectral Pink Moon, or with the psychotic "Plastic Ono Band" by the battered Lennon... words that pour out like gushes of blood from the stereo speakers, mercilessly, quiet words shouted, whispered sweetly or hoarsely but always irritating, naked, true, uncomfortable.

Gushes of blood also on the cover, signifying the radical (rightful) judgment the artist gives of his country's terrible foreign policy. The album dates back to 1992, shortly after the Gulf War and the nonsense of Bush Senior... unfortunately, it's all too easy to feel the cynical invectives that Baerwald inserts into it more relevant than ever, devastated in the soul by the awareness of the moral havoc of a rotten world where a minority of cunning and scoundrels, be they CIA or religious, salespeople or lawyers, drug enforcement or the president of their own country, strive every day to take advantage, grab, overpower, violate, holding hostage and marginalizing those who try more or less to heed their conscience.

This great American militant songwriter, a former addict, son of a political victim of McCarthyism, was born in the country most cruel and ruthless to losers, the most deceitful and dangerous because it has a shiny and efficient facade, continuously polished by a forge of talented professionals of disengagement and hypocrisy. His is the malaise and his the frustrations of an individual who feels his fate controlled and spied upon by aberrant powers... the only refuge, even if under total siege, is love and feelings for those who care about you.

Oscillating between ivory anger, dry cynicism, and melancholic decay, this series of ten songs employs the most varied musical languages, dressing with fearful class, as well as notable and suitable stylistic variety, the corrosive, disorganized, or resigned, deathly lyrics. I don't know if the credit goes to Baerwald or rather to his producer Bill Bottrell or both, but the fact remains that "Triage" is anything but an album unbalanced towards the lyrical component.

For example, the opening "A Secret Silken Word", slightly jazz-infused, rolls nocturnal and morbid for minutes on end, with Herb Alpert's trumpet carving its way through the quietly desperate and lonely vocals, immediately making it clear that this is an album different from all the others. The following "Got No Shotgun Hydrahead Octopus Blues", terribly angry, is a manic and disordered sequence of invectives against power in many of its forms, delivered with a skeletal and dense groove that terrifies. The third track "Nobody" boasts great production, full of industrial effects (but the most chilling blows are the repeated "I am nobody" that David recites with a voice that makes your legs buckle...) on a suffocating and hypnotic loop. No mercy either for the following "The Waiter", this time a sort of "White Hip Hop" hallucinated and dangerous.

There's a slight respite with the fifth "AIDS & Armageddon" (despite the title), a nice blues groove of dry and snappy electric guitars over a funky rhythm and here we are at a masterpiece titled "The Postman": splendid effects (Apache helicopters in action, congressional speeches...) surround this desperately descriptive lament of a "normal" life surrounded and taken hostage by the worst wickedness: chilling, as is the seventh piece "A Bitter Tree", voice acoustic guitar and little else with Baerwald speaking of his father, forgiveness "like a bitter apple at the foot of a bitter tree" and more from his gut. Beautiful too is "China Lake", a glimpse of quiet and resigned awareness of the "pain and shame of surrender", more traditional than others in its still acoustic guise. Followed by the majestic "A Brand New Morning" which reminds me of the best Bruce Springsteen (though Baerwald is much more fierce, genuine, and refined) for how the beautiful chorus is delivered with depth and passion. Closing the work is "Born For Love", a new scene of everyday life, sweet and touching, always pervaded by that decadent sense of existential surrender before the prevailing rot, a declaration of love that seems like that of a prisoner standing at the visiting room.

A demanding record, to face by accounting for the absolute crumbling force of one's defenses. But it is art, popular art of our time.