Harlan T. Bobo
I'm Your Man
[Goner Records; 2007]
Rating: 8.1
Not too many people can make maturity and mundanity sound attractive or, god forbid, sexy, but Harlan T. Bobo, age unknown, certainly can. I'm Your Man is only his second album, but already he manages to sound genuinely world-weary, if not (he'll admit) particularly wise. On the jauntily strummy title track, he seduces a woman by saying he'll treat her kids like his own-- an almost comic understatement of a traditional blues come-on. Bobo doesn't even try to pass himself off as anything but a fixer-upper: "I skip parties and dodge all your friends," he sings candidly, the line evoking a scene of desperate passes and lowered expectations. Likewise, the remark "A pragmatic woman is the only kinda woman can make a good man outta me," from "Pragmatic Woman", implies overdrawn checking accounts, messy rooms, and a woman with a big job on her hands.
Singing in a grainy barroom tenor that barely suppresses his ironies, irritations, and mannish-boy insecurities, Bobo sees the humor in these lyrics, but never plays his songs strictly for laughs. The album suggests that he knows he's been wasting his time and has fewer opportunities because of it: "I don't do what I should," he sings on "My Life", "to make my life good." As his opportunities dwindle, he sees death looming just beyond the reach of his lyrics. "My Life" and "Last Step" worry over the inevitable end, but such gravity bumps elbows with winking levity. "Baptist Memorial", with its doo-wop backing vocals and organ pulsing like a heart monitor, finds him hospitalized; as his doctors warn against strenuous movement or overexcitement, all he can think of is the hot RN and "a time when you dressed as my nurse/ It really turned us on."
Bobo may be trying to settle down, but musically he's still playing the field. I'm Your Man is all over the place: muddy guitar rock, acoustic folk in the Leonard Cohen vein (of course), hell-bent country that pours some out for Townes Van Zandt. There are some specifically Memphis notes as well, such as the Reigning Sound guitars on the chorus of "My Life" and the slightly-higher-than-lo-fi Grifters scuzz on "God's Lamb" and "Sick of It". That's appropriate considering the local who's who that guests on the album: there's a Grifter (Dave Shouse), two Reigning Sounds (Alex Greene and Jeremy Scott), and a former Afghan Whig (Paul Buchignani), as well as Doug Easley, Alicja Trout, and local horn players Jim Spake and Scott Thompson. Bobo seems game for any direction they want to take him, amiably presiding over the crowded proceedings as if holding court at the P&H. The result is a homegrown album that ably exploits Bobo's local connections, his musical eccentricities, his grim self-reflective humor, and his painfully heightened sense of irony.
After he finally pledges his loyalty to that pragmatic single mom, she promptly dumps him. The final two songs allow him to vent his resentment and lick his wounds: "One of These Days" might sound particularly nasty without his resigned vocals and the song's airy Morricone vibe, and closer "Pretty Foolish Things", recorded live at local indie station WEVL, is the lesson learned: "I can't be trusted with cash," he sings, then later: "I can't be trusted with love/ I always throw away my love on pretty foolish things... like you."
-Stephen M. Deusner, July 31, 2007
