minus Michael Stipe, add a rhythmic lift to this album's sarcasm. I'm not talking swing or funk or anything arcane, just straight propulsion of the sort punk made commonplace, and here his latest sessioneers, R.E.M. It's whether he's really a clod-whether his sense of rhythm is good enough to induce you to listen as frequently as his lyrics deserve. The real question about Zevon isn't whether he's really a wimp. Really now, could Ross Macdonald imagine such a thing? A. Thompson gunner, mercenary, NSC operative, werewolf, easy lay, he puts his head on the tracks for penance, and when the train doesn't come gets up and hurls himself against the wall of the Louvre museum. fell for on the tastefully omitted (again-maybe he knows something) 'Hasten Down the Wind.' Because he inhabits his tricksters, blackguards, and flat-out psychotics rather than reconstituting variations on a formula, he tops his boy Ross Macdonald any day. Though the selection forgives more reveries than one might prefer, they function as a well-earned respite from dementia only 'Accidentally Like a Martyr' throws up the kind of tuneful fog Linda R. So this is where Warren the Rocker kicks Warren the Poet's butt. Unlike so many songpoets, Zevon's a real writer, and as lyrics his ravers hold up better than his songpoems. A-Ī Quiet Normal Life: The Best of Warren Zevon If 'Never Too Late for Love' and 'Looking for the Next Best Thing' announce that this overexcitable boy has finally learned to compromise, 'Let Nothing Come Between You' is his promise not to take moderation too far. It's a wise, charming, newly written going-to-the-chapel number that I would have sworn was lifted from some half-forgotten girl group. Nor, God knows, is it the modern-macho mythos of the title cut and the Tom McGuane song. What convinces me isn't the deeply satisfying 'Ain't That Pretty at All,' in which Zevon announces his abiding desire to hurl himself at walls-he's always good for a headbanger. The three best songs are all from Excitable Boy, and only one of the two new originals stands the fire, but any Zevon album that bypasses 'Hasten Down the Wind' and 'Accidentally Like a Martyr' is the one I'll play when I need my fix. If your idea of rocking out is lots of bass drum on the two (even during 'Bo Diddley's a Gunslinger'), then Warren at the Roxy will do you almost as good as the climax of Live Rust. But the only ones that score are the jokes: Ernie K-Doe's sly, shy 'A Certain Girl,' and 'Gorilla, You're a Desperado,' a satire of the Eagles, not to mention Warren Zevon. In fact, just about every song boasts a good line or three. I don't know why the title tune's the title tune, except maybe to contextualize the classical interludes he composed all by himself, and Lord help us he's been hanging out with the Eagles, just like Randy Newman, who could teach him something about slandering the South-even Neil Young could do better than incest and Lynyrd Skynyrd, though the brucellosis is a nice touch. After all, is she going to cover the one about the headless gunner? A-īad Luck Streak in Dancing School But no one has yet been able to explain to me what 'accidentally like a martyr' might mean-answers dependent on the term 'Dylanesque' are not acceptable-and I have no doubt that that's the image Linda will home in on. The four that exorcise male psychoses by mock celebration are positively addictive, the two uncomplicated rockers do the job, and two of the purely 'serious' songs get by. The further these songs get from Ronstadtland, the more I like them. I am suspicious of singer-songwriters who draw attention to phrases like 'hasten down the wind,' and I would suggest a moratorium on songs about the James Brothers that don't also rhyme 'pollution' and 'solution.' But I like the way Zevon resists pigeonholes like 'country-rock' while avoiding both the banal and the mystagogical, and I like quatrains like: 'And if California slides into the ocean/Like the mystics and statistics say it will/I predict this motel will be standing/Until I pay my bill.' B+ I'll Sleep When I'm Dead (An Anthology) A.A Quiet Normal Life: The Best of Warren Zevon A.

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