The album opens with “The
Immigrant,” which is the name of a 1917 Charlie Chaplin film. Even if you
haven’t seen that film, it is likely that you’ve seen clips and stills from it.
This song is a quirky sort of folk that I love. It is told from the perspective
of an actual immigrant working as an electrician on Chaplin’s film. “I’ve
got a hunch, I’ve got a gnawing suspicion/No one here has experienced
malnutrition/I feel mostly bitter, but I feel a little glad/That there are
people in this world who haven’t hurt the way that I have.” This track
features some nice work by Alec Miller on clarinet. Those of us who work in
film and television here in Los Angeles might appreciate this song even more
than those who don’t, as he sings “It’s
not magic/I know how it’s done” and “It’s
not magic/I know all the tricks.” And then he adds, “But I see old men smiling like kids and just for a moment I believe it
exists/Just for a moment I believe it exists.” Wonderful! We can all use a
little magic these days. “The Immigrant” is followed by “Great Fire of
Thessaloniki,” which begins as a mellower tune with gentle, delicate work on
guitar. Then Nate’s vocals take on a stronger, more emphatic tone. This song is
about a fire in Greece that left seventy thousand people without homes, and
features some good work on guitar. One of the many things I love about this
album is the way Nate plays with language and phrases, as he does in these
lines: “It’s all Greek to me/This kind of tragedy.”
One of my favorite tracks is “Smokey
Joe Wood,” about the baseball player. I love the infectious joy of this tune,
of its sound. Plus, it’s about baseball, my favorite sport, and about a player
who pitched for the Red Sox (go Sox!) before going to Cleveland. This track
even includes a bit of “Take Me Out To The Ballgame,” with Nate adding his own
spin and lyrics to it: “Watch out old chap
for that patch of wet grass/But you slip and you fall and you stay down/Your
hand's in crippling pain/It only takes one strike in this unforgiving life
called the old ball game.” How
fucking great is that? And check out these lines: “You can accept your fate, but your stats will still tank/‘Cause you're
out, you're out of the game.” I
absolutely love this song, through all the turns it takes. And “Make the most of this sick, sick joke”
is the best advice I’ve heard in a long time. That’s followed by “Lawrence Of
Tremadog,” and the opening lines about being older (“I’m older than I was last year/I’m older than I was when I said ‘I’m
older than I was last year’”) remind me of that They Might Be Giants song “Older”
from Mink Car. But the line that I
love from this one is “More wars than
not, I’m sure, are fought on dishonest grounds.” I love not only the line,
but the way that line is delivered. There is an oddly pleasant tone to it. By
the way, this song is about Thomas Edward Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia).
“Bere Ferrers” has a cheerful,
jaunty groove at the start that I like. The lyrics, then, come in something of
a contrast to this groove: “Captain
please/We’ve had nothing to eat since 6 this morning/The boys won’t admit it/But
their stomachs are rumbling fiercer than an Albatross engine/Bone thin with
fish skeleton ribs/Singing submerged hymns to Poseidon.” It is a song of
soldiers in a train station accident, a song of “The weddings that we’ll miss/And the funerals we wish we did.” And
it features Alec Miller on flute. It also features more nice play with
language, such as this line: “I was sick
of home, now I’m homesick.” Another line that stands out is “You are only a human being,” perhaps in
part because it is repeated. And these lines really stopped me cold: “By the time the train made it to Exeter’s
gates/They were twelve men short and two hours late.” This songwriter is
really masterful, in directing just how the listener will feel or react at any
given moment. Then “Jeannette Rankin” is a song about the first congresswoman, and
it features vocals by a woman calling herself Ukulelephant (first on backing
vocals, then on lead for one section toward the end). Some politicians should
take heed of these lines: “She spoke to
them and she listened/But she listened more than she spoke.” Jeannette
Rankin was against declaring war in 1917, and my favorite lines from this song
are “The war to end all war/What do you
take me for?”
“Fatima” is an interesting song
about a spot where some children claimed they saw the Virgin Mary. And, oh god,
the line about small pox (“And spread
seeds like Columbus spread smallpox”) caught me by such surprise that I
ended up laughing out loud (and quite loud – sorry, neighbors). Then in “Silvertown,”
the lines that stand out are “I know you’re
fighting the good fight/But do you really have to?” And in “The Winter
Palace,” the line “Swarms of starving
artists, grandmothers and Marxists” for one reason or another makes me
laugh. This song directed at Nicholas II contains a spoken word section: “A situation like this cannot last long. I
repeat once more – it is impossible to rule the country without paying
attention to the voice of the people, without meeting their needs, without a
willingness to admit that the people themselves understand their own needs.”
Hmm, can you think of a certain mendacious, demented racist who should pay
attention to those lines? I also love the last lines of this song: “I don’t know what it feels like to have
subjects, let alone ones that revolt/But I’d imagine it’s something like
getting dumped by a hundred and some odd million people at once.”
I know I keep mentioning lines
that I love, but that is because the lyrics to this album are a large part of
its appeal (though certainly not the only element that I appreciate). So,
anyway, here are yet more lines that caused me to burst out in joyous laughter
(these from “Love Field”): “Down there
the people look like scuttling insects/Indistinguishable from the tiny specks
of dust on my windshield/Is this how it feels/Is this how it feels to be a god?”
And then Nate follows those with, “If I had
to guess, it’s probably not.” I love the way the lyrics are sung with exuberance.
“All that’s left is the ocean rolling out
to infinity/I know it ends, but it’s infinite to me/The closest thing to
forever that I’ll ever see.” That’s followed by “The First (And Last) Queen
Of Hawaii,” a song with kind of a pretty vibe. The album then concludes with “History
Repeats,” in which Nate sings “Stand up,
see history repeat/Sit down, see history repeat/Go out, see history repeat/Stay
home, see history repeat.” Hmm, perhaps the whole idea of the album is now
spelled out in its final song. After all, these songs are as much about the
present as they are about the past. And perhaps it’s inescapable. This unusual
song includes a spoken word section.
CD Track List
- The Immigrant
- Great Fire Of Thessaloniki
- Smokey Joe Wood
- Lawrence Of Tremadog
- Bere Ferrers
- Jeannette Rankin
- Fatima
- Silvertown
- The Winter Palace
- Love Field
- The First (And Last) Queen Of Hawaii
- History Repeats
A Century Ago was released on March 31, 2018.
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