Green on Red
The Killer Inside Me

Jim Thompson's novels are classified as crime stories or noir, but their focus is never the solution of a crime, the discovery of the murderer. Rather, they are studies on the mood and psychology of characters who are never good but are divided between bad and very bad, and within everyone's soul, a murderer resides. They are cursed tales of an American province with a dirty and menacing soul, where there are peeling billboards and cheap motels, drifters and low-life conmen, greedy and scheming men, and corrupt and psychotic lawmen.

One of Thompson's most vital, ironic, and shocking novels is The Killer Inside Me, published in 1952. A disturbing book, written without adhering to the rules of good manners nor peaceful civil living, politically correct, as we would say today.

The protagonist is Lou Ford, the esteemed deputy sheriff of a very provincial and suffocating Texan town, who hides something murky in his past. What he calls "the sickness." Unhealthy death urges. The desire to kill.

The Killer Inside Me, the fifth studio work by Green On Red, borrows its title from Jim Thompson's noir. Danny Stuart, afflicted by alcoholism issues, like Thompson himself, encounters his novels and becomes so obsessed that he spiritually identifies with the protagonists.

At the time of its release, The Killer Inside Me was considered by many as a minor record or even a monumental misstep, pretentious and poorly arranged. But the irascible Dan told everyone to go to hell and went on his way.

In reality, this album exudes a considerable charm, especially if listened to more than 35 years after its creation. The Killer is an immersion into the dark side of America, spanning eleven bitter and furious stories, between the twilight visions of Sam Peckinpah's films and the rawness of hard-boiled novels. It is the band's most sincere and bare record. It is the snapshot capturing a transitional moment after which nothing is ever the same. It is the mirror of Stuart's restless soul, imposing on his companions a change of register, departing from the country rock of wide spaces and skies ignited by the sunsets of the southwest of No Free Lunch, moving to a powerful and urban rock, illuminated - or perhaps we should say darkened - by the great black sun of the City of Angels.

The album is recorded between L.A. and Memphis, and the production is entrusted to Jim Dickinson (Stones, Ry Cooder, and Byrds, among others), who contributes to the Green On Red's transition towards a metropolitan sound, hard, nervous, halfway between the electric storms of Neil Young of Zuma and the urban tumult of the Rolling Stones of Let It Bleed, where Chuck Prophet's dirty and rusty guitar overwhelms everything, and Stuart sings at the top of his lungs, spitting blood, phlegm, and despair amid waves of reverb and distortion. Chris Cacavas's organ and piano are relegated to a supporting role, however, Chris places his qualities as a fine arranger at the service of the new sounds. Jack Waterson's bass and Keith Mitchell's drums lay down a thundering power never heard before in the previous Green on Red's records. Gospel choirs hover here and there, accentuating the "southern" flavor desired by Dickinson.

The Killer is an album that contains sinister and extraordinarily beautiful songs like "Clarksville" and "No Man's Land", bitter ballads that offer no escape like "Mighty gun", "Jamie", and the wonderful "We ain't free", escapes across the Mexican border like "Sorry Naomi", a "Born To Fight" that is the manifesto of all the losers and marginalized adrift in some roadside tavern, as well as the concluding title track that digs into the guts until Prophet's guitar drags everything away in a whirlwind that fades into the desert.

Like Jim Thompson's novel, the eponymous album by Green On Red speaks of each of us. Of the darkness we have deep in our souls and the killer we can glimpse every time we look at a reflective surface.