TOM RUSSELL - MESABI
Proper Records

When a press release describes an album as ‘cinematic’, my eyebrows are inevitably raised in amused disbelief, but you know, that description is pretty accurate in the case of Tom Russell’s new release. Mesabi does indeed have the scope and the feel of some sprawling road movie.

Less a collection of songs as a series of true life stories, this is remarkable stuff. Foot-stomping title track Mesabi deals with Bob Dylan’s youth, while When the Legend Dies is a hauntingly gorgeous story about your heroes never being able to live up to their image. Other songs tell moving, emotional stories about child star Bobby Driscoll (Farewell Never Never Land), Cliff Edwards – aka Ukelele Ike, the voice of Jiminy Cricket (The Lonesome Death of Ukelele Ike), Sterling Hayden, Liz Taylor (Furious Love) and James Dean (A Land Called "Way Out There"), reaching a conclusion in Roll the Credits – a mini concept album about the fickle nature of celebrity and death that is devastatingly beautiful and lamentful, having touches of Lou Reed as story-telling best.

The rest of the album is more of a mixed bag. Heart Within a Heart is described as a ‘palette cleanser’ at mid-point in the album, and is a pleasant, gospelly number that moves away from the darkness of the preceding numbers, while God Created Border Towns and Goodnight Juarez are latin-flavoured, low-key numbers, and Jai Alai is more upbeat flamenco number. Official album closer Love Abides is a simple acoustic ballad that ends the album on an upbeat note.

Except that this isn’t quite the end, as this edition has two bonus tracks – the title track from Monte Hellman’s The Road to Nowhere and – appropriately, given his presence throughout the early half of the album – an epic cover of Dylan’s A Hard rain’s A-Gonna Fall, with Lucinda Williams and Calexico guesting.

This is a remarkable album, very much a work of two halves – and while the first half of the album is by far the most inteestying, there is much to admire in the latter parts. Russell’s hard-bitten, emotive sound, the simplicity of the music and the fascinating nature of the tales told here make this a masterful slice of Americana.

DAVID FLINT

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