John Train
Looks Like Up
Record Cellar RCP 070

by William Michael Smith

John Train's second release is a gem of a minimalist singer-songwriter album. Based in Philadelphia, fronted by singer-songwriter Jon Houlon, and produced by Mike Brenner (Marah, Slo Mo), the band has distilled a quiet but deep recording featuring Houlon's smart lyrics and crisp, sophisticated playing. The John Train name was cribbed from the legendary leftist folk singer-activist Phil Ochs, who not only wrote a song called "The Legend of John Train" but used the name John Train as his performing persona late in his life when his mind was failing.

Given his style and content, Houlon could easily slip over the line into the saccharine zone but his years in Austin (1990-92) seem to have marked that area off-limits, as his songs are at once sensitive and smart and vividly realistic. He probes at the divides in modern relationships and lays them out for us with touchingly wistful and surgically comedic lyrical precision. He can be introverted and introspective ("Lonely Next Door"), the sensitive singer songwriter personified, but he can also dish out the subtle barbs and criticisms that result from the situations incumbent in today's relationships ("Did You Come By Your Bitterness Honestly"). There are touches of Loudon Wainright in John Train's music, but these are more a matter of sound and presentation than of content.

With Brenner on dobro, Mark Tucker on steel guitar, Steve Demarest on bass, and Bill Fergusson on mandolin, and an assortment of very able additional players, the music is subtle and bright with that public radio feel. Genre-wise, there is no dominant genre although on average we would probably be smart to call this modern folk pop. Within the John Train musical smorgasborg, there are sounds that come from bluegrass, pop, folk, country, roots rock, even the fringes of blues and jazz. Just call it music.

During his Austin period, Houlon was an admirer of Damon Bramblett ("I used to be one of about three people who would show up for all of his gigs; I thought he was awesome"), and those familiar with Bramblett will find a certain Bramblett vibe about some of Houlon's lyrics, singing and musical presentation, although the John Train sound doesn't have that sinister twanging edge that much of Bramblett's has. But what the John Train sound does have is an incredibly wide range, both sonically and emotionally.

Looks Like Up is a quiet, pleasant album that, rather than bashing its way in, sneaks into your consciousness with its warmth and its intelligence, its humanity and its humor. I get many of the same feelings from Looks Like Up that I got from Clem Snide's The Ghost of Fashion. There is a chaste, close-to-the-vest urban modernity in John Train's work, an immediacy that is absolutely in the "now" that is mentally appealing and lasting. Just like Snide's work, John Train's songs would make a perfect fit for the television show Ed with its touching, humanistic, sympathetic view of the psychological and emotional snake pit that typifies modern life. There is nothing cynical, no putting down or looking-down-one's-nose attitude about John Train's slices-of-life stories, but there is a smartness and wit that is undeniable and engaging. Houlon demonstrates an uncommon amount of sharp insight in his observations.

Did you come by your bitterness honestly?
If you did, then that's okay
But if you read it in some storybook
What would your mother say?
Take a break, son, from the tortured routine
Call that girl on the line and say "what do you need?"
Did you come by your bitterness honestly?
If you did, then that's okay

What does John Train know about love? They don't imply that they know more (or less) than you or I, but they do demonstrate that they may have a unique view. "If I'm Gonna Get Blamed" is one of the most imaginative and twisted love songs I've heard in a long while.

If I'm gonna get blamed for being your lover
I might as well be
I could disappoint you and pretend that it's true
That you're the only thing that's important to me

I could wake up in the morning and hold you by the shoulders
Look in the fridge and pretend that I'm older
Than the little kid blues dealing with a woman
Who knows what she wants and doesn't like what she sees

You're lookin' at me
You're lookin' at me
Stop lookin' at me

But the Train song that crawled inside my brain and wouldn't leave was the dark and emotionally bitter "500 Miles." In Train's vision of love, there is no emotional pit so deep and impenetrably dark as the pit of rejection. "500 Miles" is all so tragic and probably all so true.

I'm not sure but I've been told
You're seeing someone new
I can't believe that I believed
I had some claim on you

I decided that you scare me
Your head ain't screwed on right
Five hundred miles to be with him
After kissing me goodnight

He's got his story straight this time
I can't challenge that effect
But to think that he's impressing you
With a night of booze and sex

Don't think the fellow's misery and bitterness stops here. This goes from maudlin soap opera to quiet, mean tragedy with the drop of a verse.

If a fire ever reached our home
I'd lie here in my bed
And let the flames burn off my skin
Until only bone remained
After years or years of deadened nerves
I could use a little pain

Houlon shows his hip, poetic visionary side in the Dylan-ish "Cracked and Crumbled." It takes a few listens to get it all with its allusions to Peppermint Lounge and Richard Farina but there's no forgetting it once you've got it.

They shot a man to pieces in the Peppermint Lounge
I held you on the floor while the bullets whizzed around
Did you ever really think I'd let danger sink his teeth into you...
"Been down so long, looks like up to me"
Richard Farina, 1963
Then his rear axle locked and he died all crumpled up upon the ground
Holiday seasons can get sorta rough
Suicide gestures but most of 'em are bluffs

His gentle and instantly memorable "Nobody's Seen The Wind" combines poetic brilliance with uncommon vision and understanding in an I'm-sorry lament for love gone wrong from lack of care and deception.

Nobody's seen your heart
You kept it secret for so long
And nobody has seen mine
Though I hid it in a song
But I bent the words of faith
Until all that's left was form
And though I meant to give so much
My intention was stillborn

I could literally quote all of Houlon's lyrics in this review because he doesn't have a single line that's a throwaway or that doesn't fit the bigger scheme of his songs. He writes from unusual points of view and has the ability to write from a variety of inner voices. Of his time in Austin, which he called a very exciting period musically because of all the great singer-songwriters who happened to be congregated in Austin during that period (Jimmy Lafave, Steve Young, Beaver Nelson, Bramblett, and others), Houlon says, "I quickly realized that I needed to write better songs and, to tell you the truth, I didn't write any good ones in Austin. I wrote a lot but I'd be embarrassed to listen to 'em now. On the other hand, I met a lot of pretty girls down there." No doubt working on future lyrical content.

There is such a variety of music and picking on this record it is difficult to talk of instrumental highlights, but Brenner's dobro work on the acoustic, countrified "Nova Scotia" ranks with anyone's. Throughout the album, whether the arrangement is simple and acoustic or given a lusher pop-oriented treatment with delicate horns, keyboards or strings, the musical accompaniment is masterfully crafted to set the proper mood, to support Houlon's plaintive singing style, and to provide the subtle coloring, texture and depth that distinguishes an excellent album from the simply good.

Looks Like Up is one of those special records by relative unknowns that deserves a much wider listening than it is likely to get without major label support. It is just the kind of smart, sensitive, clever record that connoisseurs prize because it gives them that instant one-up when it comes time to impress friends. This is one of those records you just put on unannounced and wait for people to ask 'who is that?' and 'where did you get it?' And they will.

* The Record Cellar, Philadelphia's home for great roots, folk and country acts that brought us Frog Holler, has scored another major coup with the release of John Train's Looks Like Up, the followup to their debut Angels Turned Thieves. Both are available now at www.record-cellar.com Make some music lover happy this Christmas with this slick little record. This is the kind of record you give to someone you care about who enjoys the finer, simpler things.







Contact William Michael Smith at: wms-at-rockzilla.net

 
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