Velvet Rut

In show biz parlance, a velvet rut is a cushy but creatively unsatisfying job that it's hard to walk away from. Perhaps that's what Virginia-based singer/songwriter Paul Curreri thought his more conventional earlier folk-blues records were leading towards, because his fifth album finds him moving in the direction of Tom Waits' Swordfishtrombones by way of lo-fi alt-folkies like Smog and Bonnie "Prince" Billy. The apocalyptic opening track "Mantra" features layers of distortion and fuzz shifting under a vocal growled in a sub-Leonard Cohen baritone, followed by the palate-cleansing instrumental title track before the much more conventional folkie jam "A Song on Robbing." The appealingly peculiar "The Wasp" finally gets the balance right between the two extremes, setting a playful country tune against a rhythm track that sounds like it was created out of a repeatedly slammed door. The rest of The Velvet Rut pitches unsteadily between tradition and experimentation, with successes and failures in both directions. This is the textbook definition of a transitional album, which can often be among an artist's most interesting work (witness Neil Young's scattershot but often brilliant post-Harvest output), but also requires quite a bit more patience on the listener's part. ~ Stewart Mason|