(Alternative country, americana) Fred Eaglesmith - Tinderbox - 2008, FLAC (image+.cue), lossless

Fred Eaglesmith doesn't release very many albums, but when he does, they're always stunners. He's won a Canadian Grammy for Best Roots & Traditional Album for Drive-in Movie in 1997 and has had tunes covered by Toby Keith, the Cowboy Junkies, Kasey Chambers, Mary Gauthier, Ralph Stanley II, Dar Williams, and Todd Snider, but his hard luck tales sound best delivered in his own dark, rumbling voice. Tinderbox is being touted as Eaglesmith's gospel album, but like everything he creates, it's gospel on his own terms. The tracks are sparse -- Eaglesmith and his band play a dark, subdued kind of music, mixed to keep Eaglesmith's minimal vocals in the center of the sonic field. The album's murky, homemade feel is perfectly suited to the material, songs that veer between light and dark, love and hate, salvation and damnation. "Get on Your Knees" is the album's centerpiece, a swampy rocker that dances with preachers, devils, and sinners to a disjointed drum beat and an eerie organ. The backing chorus sounds half mad, or drunk, or possessed as the tune moves to a climax of scratchy processed vocals, ululating organ, and a lamenting choir. It contrasts neatly with the almost a cappella (there is a bit of ragged harmonica as well) "Fancy God." The massed voices eschew harmony to deliver a message that's hopeful and superior as they sing "That god you got is a fancy god, he's not the one I know, he don't live in parking lots outside of monster homes..." On "Sweet Corn," "Chain Gang," and "Shoulder to the Wheel" Eaglesmith looks at the work-a-day world with a combination of anger and resignation, painting grim portraits of people working without any hope of reasonable recompense. Eaglesmith takes us to the church of futility on "Tinderbox," "Killing Me," and "Worked Up Field," players to a God who seems to be deaf, blind, and indifferent. As he sings "Worked Up Field" a woman's voice speaks in the background about the passions that are consuming everyone she knows. As Eaglesmith sings "I pray, pray, pray all day and it don't rain at all..." a guitar chimes in the background like a distant church bell announcing another futile Sunday morning service. "I Pray Now," a pounding gospel tune, and "Stand," a moaning, droning hymn, seem to offer some hope, but the set closes with "Shoeshine," a look at lost soul who totes a .44 and a quart of whisky and hatred for his wife, and "When," a despondent plea for immediate salvation. Most albums with this kind of an unremittingly dark vision wear out their welcome long before they reach the last song, but Eaglesmith's powerful spell is oddly uplifting and has you pushing the replay button every time. ~ j. poet, All Music Guide
You don’t name an album Tinderbox unless you want to light a few fires. Fred Eaglesmith’s newest album has a barnstorming fervor, a fire-and-brimstone vision of what’s going wrong with America. And even if he couches it in Grapes of Wrath-ish folk blues, don’t you be fooled for one minute – this is topical stuff.
That working-class bitterness Barack Obama took flak for talking about? Fred Eaglesmith can cite you chapter and verse.
How can you ignore a lyric like “That God you got is a fancy god / And he’s not the one I know” (“Fancy God”), or “Bells softly ring / Beneath their steeple / They’re selling souls / And they’re dealing people” (“You Can’t Trust Them”), or “The church is like a tinderbox / The preachers got a match / Salvation is a raining down / And falling down the cracks” (“Tinderbox”)?
Something’s got this man riled up but good.
Alongside these satires are the laments of poor working stiffs, songs like “Sweet Corn,” “Chain Gang,” “Shoulder to the Plow,” “Worked Up Field,” “Shoeshine” – the titles are a fair indication of the glamour quotient here. “When you got no reason / Keep on believing”, he sings wryly in “Shoulder to the Plow,” “Doesn’t matter if you don’t know how / Never mind if that horse is blind / Keep your shoulder to the plow.” Fleshed out with jangly instrumentations, slogging rhythms, and incantatory repetitions, they’re the bedrock of this hypnotic album.
There’s more than an touch here of Tom Waits, both in Eaglesmith’s craggy vocals and the noirish instrumentals, which are full of dissonant steel guitars and washboards and banjos. But unlike Waits’ gallery of eccentrics, Eaglesmith’s no-name slobs are deliberately generic Everyman figures. Don’t expect romance, either – the only love song is the poignant “Quietly,” about an affair running aground on depression and despair, the fall-out of lives lived without hope.
I appreciate the fact that Eaglesmith doesn't belabor the specifics; he's less a satirist than a moralist. The gap between haves and have-nots, between true believers and fellow travelers, concerns him more than any particular political issue.
But what I appreciate even more is the musical spell he casts, with an un-gussied-up blend of folks, blues, and bluegrass that's quintessentially American. Having accumulated a sizeable following over several years by word-of-mouth rather than media hype, Eaglesmith may be poised right now to break through to a wider audience. But I get the sense that he won't sacrifice his weathered humanism to do so.
Eaglesmith’s fierce populism rings sincere; there’s no aw-shucks Nashville fakery here, no flannel-shirted posturing. And bleak as his picture may sound in some stretches of this CD, he manages to redeem it in songs like “I Pray Now”, “Get On Your Knees,” “Wheels,” and “Stand,” bursting through with indomitable spirit. Eaglesmith’s insistent faith in that human spark shivers through this entire album; it’s a moving thing indeed. blogcritics
Tinderbox, the most recent album from Ontario’s Fred Eaglesmith, could well stand as a milestone album for the (almost) always impressive resident of Port Dover.
Never one to shy away from hot-button topics, this time out Eaglesmith has created Tinderbox, a collection of almost twenty songs both loosely and directly connected to fundamentalist religion and manipulation. He captures sketches of people who hold to strong, imbedded faith. As a concept album, the songs and sounds stand as a vital, dynamic project. The individual songs, when approached singularly, hold the listeners attention and can be appreciated as such.
“Quietly,” “Sweet Corn,” “Shoulder to the Plow,” (written with Mary Gauthier) and “The Light Brigade” stand with anything Eaglesmith has previously written. These are not the catchy songs of 50-Odd Dollars, Drive-In Movie or even Milly’s Café.Eaglesmith has always delved deep, but this time has gone even further into his soul to colour each song with passion while maintaining a unified, coherent sound.
“Shoulder to the Plow” starts out rather easily- seemingly even a bit lazy- before its elegance and brilliance is revealed: “Fox is in the hen house, crow’s in the corn, devil dancing in the church yard blowing his horn; Sun beating down it’s a dusty old road, only one place you can go.” Like the best Texas songwriters- Ray Wylie Hubbard, Guy Clark, Steve Earle- Eaglesmith has that rare ability to combine the familiar and the profound within descriptions that are straightforward, outwardly obvious, and completely original.
The song (“Worked Up Field”) where Kori Heppner talks over Fred’s singing kind of confuses me, but the resulting juxtaposition of her observations of her man’s failings and obsessions with his lamenting about rainfall and trains seems positively real.
Eaglesmith’s tendency to draw toward stylistic annunciation challenges the listener, but provides the album with a touch of southern affectation that feels appropriate given the subject matter.
“Quietly” doesn’t appear to be about religion and fundamentalism, although I suppose the characters within the song could easily be those who attend any of the country churches described elsewhere. To this listener, it is a love song, one of Eaglesmith’s best. There is a tension, a darkness permeating the song, even as “the morning light” invades the bedroom.
This musique noir repeats itself throughout the album. Within “Get On Your Knees,” the narrator finds his strength through prayer with shocking result. “I stayed up til dawn, praying for her soul; Satan was awaiting, she come through the door.”
“Killing Me II” is also dark, but in a different way; here the refrain of “This old world is killing me” is spoken/sung until it becomes mantra-like. Hypnotizing, really.
“Stand” is a straight-forward gospel number, and one senses that Eaglesmith included such a song to further define the lifestyle and society he characterizes throughout Tinderbox. Its singer is in glory, happy to know that his mother no longer has to worry as he “is standing on the rock.” I can hear a bluegrass band doing this one.
There is no hint of arrogance or judgment about Tinderbox. One suspects one knows where Eaglesmith’s allegiances lay, but he serves almost as a reporter- respectfully describing and identifying that which he witnesses.
I can’t swear that all the instruments are acoustic, but it sounds that way to my ears. Maybe I missed some electric bass or other guitar, but the album appears to be predominately unadorned by anything but wood, steel, and percussion. Willie P. Bennett makes his final recorded appearance on this album, and while his individual contributions are not listed, one appreciates what one assumes are his touches of mandolin.
The album sounds a bit like an episode of the HBO series Carnivàle looked. It is grey, dusty, and sparse. The instrumentation is percussion heavy- bells, shakers- and seldom do more than a couple instruments sound prominent in the mix.
Fred has always scared the hell out of me, and after Tinderbox…let’s just say I’m reconsidering the balance- or lack of it-within my own life. More than ever, I’m on Fred’s side. Tinderbox received one of my votes in the initial Polaris Music Prize balloting this summer, and certainly is deserving of any accolades it may receive.
Tinderbox isn’t likely the best place to delve into Fred Eaglesmith’s music for the first time. But, it is certainly worth exploring. It is destined to be considered a classic. ~Fervor Coulee- roots music opinion
I had heard the CD described as gospel for the unbeliever. After listening over and again and again, I disagree. Fred Eaglesmith believes in something, but, in his own words: