Mayo Thompson
Corky's Debt To His Father

THE REVIEW

The debt that Corky pays to his father is a kaleidoscopic spectrum of emotions in the discovery of how the origins of traditional American music heavily influence the contemporary taste (we are here in 1969), but with hindsight, even the taste yet to come; like a sort of "nothing fundamentally ever changes", except for the technical means used in the service of expression.

Mayo Thompson, the deus ex-machina of that crazy and brilliant project that was (is) Red Crayola, brings in this isolated solo project all the armament of flavors and emotions that characterized the group, putting it to work in a more intimate and mood-driven project... irreverent in the lyrics towards the increasingly money-centric and dehumanized society, and in the music which is no longer the circus wagon of Red Crayola, but through apparent simplicity develops a wide spectrum of expressive forms related to the "cultured" songwriting that is emerging worldwide.

The "Barrettian" country of the opening "The Lesson", an irreverent tirade against the education system, or the dramatic vaudeville of "Around The Home", a complaint about the depersonalization sweeping through society; these are shining examples. But Thompson is much more than this; he does not limit himself, he is a torrential force, taking Bob Dylan and having him interpreted by Nick Cave, in the splendid "Good Brisk Blues" where the sing-song voice of the former lives on the tension of the latter, supported by a skeletal rhythmic structure and a restless piano. It anticipates a certain minor seventies cinematography in the rural easy-listening freak of the accomplished "Horses" or in the rarefaction of a distant orchestral extraction of "Dear Betty Baby" with the winds filling the willful deficiencies of the acoustic guitar and voice. Winds that disappear completely in the intimate blues of "Black Legs", a tribute to all that black tradition... the child of slavery and cotton, almost in contrast with the folk of "Fortune" imbued with that typically British melancholy, of which Nick Drake was the highest and most sublime expression, even if here it’s slightly bastardized with the country from which a Texan like Thompson seems inseparable.

As noted also in the other Barrettian piece that is "Oyster Things" where a soft slide emerges amid the meshes of an infantile vaudeville march; although it's worth mentioning that our protagonist is absolutely indebted to nothing to the mad diamond of Cambridge, of whom he is a contemporary, if not slightly ahead of his time, and probably does not reach the deserved fame that Barrett has today (you will always be in my heart Roger Keith, R.I.P. - n.d.l.) due to the different path Mayo has taken.

This "Corky's Debt To His Father" is certainly an album of more "simple" accessibility compared to its predecessors signed by Red Crayola (Krayola), even if "Worried Worried", the track that closes it, is unsettling, as it is ahead of its time. Take the Faust of "Je Mal Aux Dents" and strip them of that dense-electronic cover, add the cold and granite blues that the six from Hamburg were capable of with Péron's voice that seems to stumble in the English chosen for the singing, and you will have the most incredible piece of ante-litteram kraut ever heard.

Word.