Robbie Fulks
Couples In Trouble
Boondoggle Records BD 02

by William Michael Smith

Back in 1998, just before the major labels pulled the rug out from under 99% of all the acts they weren't 100% sure would go platinum with every note they recorded, Robbie Fulks used Geffen Records big bucks to show us he was straying from the alt-country path and heading for the eclectic. His latest release, Couples In Trouble, confirms that Fulks is anything but a one-trick alt-country pony.

Fulks is no dummy and he probably knew that stretching his creative wings would confuse some of his diehard core of fans who worship Robbie Fulks, Alt-Country Screw-the-Establishment Icon. When Fulks released Let's Kill Saturday Night, those same fans could obviously see that Fulks' guidance telemetry was malfunctioning, that the Fulks musical rocket was skewing off its familiar course, getting further and further from the Country Love Songs/South Mouth launch pad into less well mapped parts of Fulks' musical space.

On Couples In Trouble, which Fulks says is "self-released" rather than "self-produced," we get Fulks fully unleashed from narrow considerations of genre and record marketing niches. Fulks has expanded his musical canvas further than ever, incorporating song structures, instrumentation, vocal stylings, and recording techniques he's never used on his recordings. With songs that range in style from raw, antique-sounding, acoustic mountain music murder songs to complex, multi-movement, highly produced (and highly dramatic) adult contemporary to alt-country rock to piano bar pop, some listeners may hear the album as a disconnected jumble of individual songs. Few if any will understand this complex, dense album (think of "dense" in terms of physics, of atomic weights) in a single listening.

More than on any of his previous albums, Fulks exercises his substantial oral interpretation skills on Couples In Trouble. As the album progresses, there is a strong sense that these songs are as much acted as sung and played. Fulks vocal approach to the dramatic, poetic, abstract lyrics filled with psychological complexity and moral ambiguity acts as a catalyst in creating a performance art feel to the set. Midway through the dark and moody "Anything For Love" (which begins with the wonderfully descriptive lines "The stars bent through the torn screen/And stared at the wreck inside/One spent shell in the magazine/Like an angel he'd bled dry"), Fulks vocally simulates the head-spinning insanity of a woman on the verge (of insanity, murder, suicide?). As the vocal progresses from one of tense control into runaway hysteria, the song itself seems on the verge of spinning out of control.

Down on the table
Her hair came tumbling
Kids were casting
In the dry breeze over the lake
You were on fire
It was 19-something
And she looked straight at you and said
Stop talking about it

By the time Fulks shrieks "Stop talking about it," there is no doubt this is no hum-along three-chord jamboree, this is a performance akin to a play or novella set to music. As each song unfolds in a different style and genre, the performance art effect is reinforced and magnified.

Some of Couples In Trouble is music for a literate soap opera, some the basis for a sit-com. It shows how brainy and eclectic Fulks is that he can write such a wide range of lyrics and find a way to weave them all together musically. His poetry is wide in scope and wise in its microscopic observation and pinpoint understanding of the way of things.

And the miles in an unknown land
Rise and fall from view
The straight roads, the dry fields, the secret lives
We're only passing through
See how the West lies on
Lines unbroken and true
Marriages hang in moments
Only passing

In an interview on his website (to read the entire interview, CLICK HERE, and be sure to take a dictionary!), Fulks said about Couples In Trouble that "three or so songs into the record I saw that a loose lyrical theme -- pairs of humans versus the world -- could be imposed on the record to its overall advantage." Such a theme has allowed the poetic license to explore the causes and effects of troubled relationships. While most of the explorations are dark and occasionally vicious, Fulks also points out portions of uncommon goodness. On the Irish-toned "Banks of The Marianne," Fulks delves into motivations and mental underpinnings as a man makes a desperate swim across four miles of treacherous water for love's sake.

By the depth of his love he was helplessly stirred
So he tamed a wild river, and named it for her
Now the world would remember the way they were then
When she was his harbor and her strength pulled him in
And the distance he'd gone from her light
He would win back the hard way that night

Fulks is unusually adept at dissecting the dark side of the couples equation. He uses the concept of "couples" in the broadest sense and, in the unblinkingly realistic "Brenda's New Stepfather," the couples equation becomes downright brutal and despicable.

I'd be careful who I'd send letters sneering at the retail trade
Maybe you think some skinny white boy's gonna keep you pretty and paid
Wait for the falling of the midnight hour
Listen for the soft turning at your latch
Hey little hotpants, I'm your daddy, no matter how hard you scratch

Fulks uses brief snatches of orchestration and studio effects to color the darker songs on the album and to masterfully tie the disparate pieces together with effective mood-changing interludes and segues. Several tracks incorporate swinging brass soul arrangements that give Fulks' music a pleasing new sound. For a full understanding of Fulks wily musical head, listen to "Mad At A Girl." While the track bounces along in a happy mid-tempo pop rock vein with a bright, snappy horn track in the break, the music in a sense camouflages the underlying less-than-pleasant ruminations gushing forth from the narrator's agitated mind. This ear-grabbing track suggests that the album could easily have been titled Couples In Turmoil.

Well, the downtown whores are calling my name, but I'm just walking blind
Yeah the weak and the poor struggle to claim my unfeeling mind
These woes of mortal men, these worthless things of the world
Well I don't care, and I won't pretend, 'cause tonight I'm mad at a girl

But despite his move into more studio effects and new song structures, don't think Fulks has abandoned his country or rock sensibilities. "Dancing On The Ashes" rocks as hard as anything on Let's Kill Saturday Night and "Real Money" has a hard-edged Steve Earle Southern twang guitar imprint reminiscent of Earle's "Tannyetown" that is an entirely new sound for Fulks. There are also several tracks that Fulks' country fans will find a familiar comfort in. Fulks, with longtime collaborator Steve Albini at the sound board, is the only artist I know of today who could pull off (or would even attempt to write and perform) a song like "In Bristol Town One Bright Day," an Appalachian hardcase track that continues a long mountain music tradition of edgy murder songs. While this track isn't exactly bluegrass in the sense that it isn't banjo-driven, listeners who have a taste for early Stanley Brothers and Bill Monroe will marvel at this amazingly authentic track. The music is spot on and Fulks' hard scrabble, blood-'n'guts lyric would have worked in pre-electrified Appalachia just as it works now.

Rock dove fly west toward the town, the church bells they are rolling
For on this night the Prince of Death a harlot's heart has stolen

In Bristol town one bright day a stranger he came riding
No work he sought but a fair-haired maid to stay the night beside him

With artists we think of as known quantities, we usually come to a new album with a certain set of internal expectations and assumptions and if those aren't met, we are puzzled, even angry. I'll be the first to admit that I didn't "get it" the first time I heard Couples In Trouble. But after cutting my Robbie Fulks teeth on Country Love Songs and South Mouth, I will also admit I didn't entirely "get" Let's Kill Saturday Night on the first pass either but it now ranks as one of my favorites.

There are few artists working today who take the chances Fulks does. He is a major talent who continues to (obstinately, some will say) demonstrate that mass commercial appeal is the farthest thing from his musical agenda. Fulks doesn't make Couples In Trouble easy to "get it." As with any artist searching for new ways of expression, there is bound to be lots of misunderstanding and grumbling and dismay expressed about new works that don't fit the familiar, comfortable mold. But based on his track record, Fulks is one of those artists that, when they change directions, you have to give them the benefit of the doubt. I've been listening to Couples In Trouble almost a month now and, since my first "what is going on here?" reaction, I keep identifying more nuances and finding new levels of depth in the lyrics and the performances. How many other albums can we say that about?

If you are looking for easy listening, pass this one by. But if you are looking for something that will stick with you long after the last track has finished, something that will make you unfold the liner notes and read the lyrics again to see if your latest interpretation is valid, you can't go wrong with Robbie Fulks and Couples In Trouble. This is brain food. And I don't mean candy.

* Looking for something that might explain the strange, tangled state your relationship with your significant other(s) is in? Couples In Trouble explains it all in terms you can understand.
www.robbiefulks.com Fulks and his expanded band will bring this "dense" music to the Mucky Duck in Houston Oct. 18 and to the Gypsy Tea Room in Dallas Oct. 20.





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

 
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