David Olney
The Wheel
Loud House Records
by Marianne Ebertowski
 Someone
who can write a song as beautiful as "If My Eyes Were Blind"
can't do anything wrong in my book. Having said that, the 11th
studio album of Yank gone Southerner David Olney is not exactly
easy listening. Olney's voice is an acquired taste, somewhere
between a countrified Tom Waits and a down to earth Captain Beefheart.
The Wheel is also very much what you could call a concept
album, and somehow, that tends to ring all my wrong bells. But,
what the hell, I like a challenge and that is exactly what Olney's
new album is: bizarre, mysterious, and strangely disturbing.
I feel right away that I cannot understand it unless I understand
what he means by "the wheel." Wheels, of course, are
big, round American things that keep you on the road. At least,
that's what I learned from Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman. And
David Olney seems to confirm that as he sings "You wheels
that hold me on this highway/Oh, keep me safe and keep me going"
a capella as an introduction to "Big Cadillac,"
which I have learned is another big American thing that keeps
you on the road.
When the wheels turn around and your number comes up
You can trade in your pencils and your little tin cup
Olney continues to a tune similar to the R&B classic "I
Idolize You." It sounds more like a threat than a promise.
Slowly during the song the wheels of the big Cadillac seem to
turn into some sort of strange wheel of fortune and leave singer
and listener behind in a desolate roadhouse, hopefully not recruited
by David Lynch for his next film. After that, the big Cadillac
takes Olney close to the river where "voices on the water
are calling to me." Hearing Deanie Richardon's threatening
fiddling, I suddenly understand why that instrument has been
considered the devil's tool in American Christian folklore.
Olney sings "I come here with nothing than a handful of
dust/To a handful of dust I will return," and I want him
to get back into his car right away. He doesn't seem to like
the landscape any more than I do.
"Excuse me, my friend" Oleny continues in a sort
of frenzy, "but this is not where I want to be/If this is
the end, I could be begging for some sympathy/I've been out in
the storm/I'm just looking to get on/That's how it feels/Chained
and bound to the wheel." And while Richardson is fiddling
the living daylight out of the whole scenery, Olney begs for
rescue. A mysterious woman's voice repeats "Oh stars that
turn around me in the night all run in circles" like a mantra
that -- just like it would happen in a David Lynch scenario --
fades straight into a torch song. "One heart, one love that's
all I have for you, now and forever" croons the singer and
leaves me with the creepy feeling that things are not quite what
they seem.
And I got religion and I got it bad
And it made me crazy, yeah it made me mad.
So I blew it all and I got free
Now I'm just as lost as I want to be
Now here's a feeling anybody damaged by old time religion
understands, and how it is related to a woman who has left the
singer and that "God-shaped hole" next to him seems
all too obvious.
Less obvious is the interpretation of the middle piece of
the album, "Revolution." As I seem to fail to understand
the mythological or literary background of this song, all I can
get out of the "it's all too easy to forget that winter's
touch is cold, we all believe that summer lasts forever"
has a rather pessimistic ring.
But here comes the singer with another mantra. "Now
I start from my heart like a ship off the ocean" that takes
us back in history to "Stonewall," a song about the
American Civil War from a Virginian's point of view that I figure
at the same time is about a lot more.
I fought with a vengenace against all the odds,
The victory was sweet, glory was God's
Let me cross over, over the river
And let me rest in the shade of the trees
From the Virginia hills the journey continues to a seedy barroom
where "Boss Don't Shoot No Dice," co-written by former
child rock star Janis Ian. It's another place where I wouldn't
like to spend a lot of time and money, and Richardson's evil
sounding fiddling again has a lot to do with it. The smell of
sulphur is so pervasive that I can just see Robert De Niro's
eyes turn yellow at the end of Angel Heart..
Immediately, however, sirens' voices remind the singer with
their "Precious time, precious love" chant of "The
Girl I Love," an almost perversely sentimental love song
and "All The Love In The World", a slightly off-key
early '60s Elvis-steps-on-Percy-Sledge's-pink-suede-shoes ballad.
In both songs Olney is accompanied by those typical girl background
singers that in the '60s ruined perfectly good records like Johnny
Cash's Bitter Tears. Both songs could have made it to
the soundtrack of Twin Peaks or Blue Velvet.
You wheels that hold me on this highway,
Oh keep me safe and keep me going
This time, the mantra is performed as a canon -- every school
kid's and school teacher's favorite musical nightmare. Then,
with another precious-love-precious-time chant, the wheel has
finally come 'round. So what is the wheel after exactly 40 minutes
of listening? Well, I figure it's just that big round thing
-- American or Zen -- that keeps us in motion until one day our
number comes up and we fall off it while for everybody else it
will keep on turning.
*www.davidolney.com
Contact Marianne Ebertowski at ebertowski-at-rockzilla.net
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