VIC CHESNUTT | AT THE CUT
“Chesnutt’s second album to feature musicians from Thee Silver Mt. Zion,
Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Witchies and Guy Picciotto from Fugazi
(who also co-produced the record with Howard Bilerman) picks up where
North Star Deserter (2007) left off, with an explosive group of arrangers
and players allowing Vic to conjure snarling spittle and devastating
fragile grace in equal measure.”
“…impish, surly, witty, unflinching perspective, brilliantly unique wordsmithery
and a profound playfulness that thumbs its nose at a life of seriously hard knocks.
humour, rage and tenderness, brutal literalism and ornate observation
– constitutes a truly original voice and reflects a truly indomitable spirit…
Vic on two European tours in support of the album: Thierry Amar (bass),
Efrim Menuck (guitar), Jessica Moss (violin) and David Payant (drums)
all of Silver Mt. Zion, along with Guy Picciotto (guitar). Together with
studio members (and occasional live players) Nadia Moss (piano, organ)
and Chad Jones (guitar), this same troupe has reunited for Vic’s second
Constellation album, once again recorded by Howard Bilerman at
Hotel2Tango in Montreal…
unknown to me”…sweet pastoral childhood reminiscence,
“Flirted With You All My Life” a quite literal ode to the dance
with death, delivered with a perfect and unaffected mix of exuberance,
defiance and insouciance…
from Athens, GA who certainly knows of what he sings (having survived
a car accident at age 18 that confined him to a wheelchair and has subjected
him to an endless cavalcade of complications, procedures, emergencies and
towering medical bills ever since), it is both refreshing and unbelievably
heartwarming to hear how Vic Chesnutt sidesteps any of the obvious Southern
Gothic tropes, lyrically and musically. No vaulted arches, gaping abysses or
burning fields here – no ‘voicing’ of the preacher or the devil, no putting on airs.
Vic manages to sing so authentically and wholeheartedly from and about his
sense of place (the South, the wheelchair, 21st century America) because he
refuses to sentimentalise any of it and rails against his personal fate without
bitterness, without apology, with a sardonic and sometimes angry poetics of
the passionately humanist and secular variety: wholly framed by the back
porch, championing a humble wisdom, a sincere ethics (without moralising)
and a natural literateness, certainly permitting a wisecrack or three, but never
allowing for anything hackneyed or cornball or fake. At The Cut is a
bona fide classic by a man better positioned than most to sing it strong and true.”
“Flirted With You All My Life”
FROM At the Cut
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“Philip Guston”
FROM At the Cut
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“Chain”
FROM At the Cut
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Video of “Chain” recording, directed by Jem Cohen:
