REVIEW : Redemption City - Examiner

Make no mistake, Joseph Arthur is not some dime-a-dozen singer-songwriter, plucking an acoustic guitar and bemoaning the state of his love life. The man is an artist in the truest sense of the word — a sculptor of soundscapes constantly pushing his craft, a poet of stunning wordplay prowess, a painter whose works have aesthetic merit and aren’t just a musician’s self-indulgent moonlighting — a Captain Beefheart of the digital age, in spirit if not in audible homage. Yet even in consideration of all his many hats, new double-album Redemption City stands apart. It’s may be a bit early to tell, but the record has the makings of a masterwork.

Throughout the 24-song sprawl, Arthur continues experimenting with the limitations of folk music, merging it with electronic, at times even trip-hop, aspects into a kaleidoscope of rich melodies. Like a mad scientist swapping a lab for a recording studio, Arthur merges disparate sounds, frankensteining components that should compete with another and clang about discordantly, but somehow fall together in a collage like pieces of a puzzle (a suggestion: listen to this with a good set of headphones to best absorb the textured nuances). “Night Clothes,” in particular, is quite the concoction, a seductive hip-hop groove laced with a synthesized Jew’s harp twang, while the 11-minute “Surrender to the Storm” is a guitar freakout-cum-spiritual, Arthur meditatively intoning amid the distortion “I surrender/To love reborn.”

The title track is another fine example of Arthur’s synergy, opening with countrified acoustic guitars and Arthur listing characteristics of Redemption City as drum machine beats and synths hover to the fore. The delirious verses juxtapose the light and the dark of the modern urban landscape: “Redemption City, sons and daughters saved/Redemption City, fill-in every grave.” It’s no surprise this song lends its name to the album entire, as it more than any other track encapsulates the dichotomies of hope and despair squaring off throughout.

The scorcher here, though, is lead single “Travel as Equals,” a Dylanesque finger-pointer with rapid fire lyrics spitting hope in the face of social injustice, a nod to Blonde on Blonde (come to think of it,Redemption City could be this era’s response to Mr. Zimmerman’s own double LP). The theme of perseverance’s reward peppers throughout, its repetition making it a mantra of solidarity: “The only way we can survive/We travel as equals or not at all.”

The lyrical highlight is found in the affecting “I Miss the Zoo,” a stream-of-consciousness litany of vivid imagery, hallucinatory in a surrealist swirl. It’s tempting to ascribe autobiographical context to the lyrics, rife with references to a former life nearly eroded by drug use and debauchery: “I miss the simplicity of addiction and the scene/I miss wandering aimlessly in half-dead sewers/with rats for eyes chewing on forgiveness/and the will to apologize.” The instrumental cadence evokes the feel of walking down sidewalks overgrown with memories. It’s a catalogue of the past, simultaneously nostalgic and grateful for having moved beyond and gained the perspective that only could come from achieving salvation from a psychotropic haze.

As a testament to his resistance to cynicism, Arthur on Jan. 18 released the album on his website for free in MP3 and FLAC formats, with fans able to make a donation if they so choose (“We are figments of the Internet/its hand reaching out/bleeding through our eyes/in the heart of our drought,” Arthur fittingly sings in the paranoia of “Humanity Fade”). The record is Arthur’s second in nine months, predecessor The Graduation Ceremony having dropped in May 2011. Such prolificacy might have contributed to the record’s only flaw, that being the second half lacks some of the cohesion of the preceding part. Still, it’s hard to consider this a fault as Arthur has said in his website's introduction to the record that the latter 12 tracks are deep cuts that “would have otherwise remained on the cutting room floor or else been leaked out over time in various ways.”

All lauding aside, prospective listeners take note: the album is a nocturnal affair. To listen to it in daylight hours is a form of blasphemy. Arthur’s voice is your disembodied guide on this nighttime tour along potholed streets beneath the auspices of glowing streetlights, a shadow looming through the fog (at its most ghostly on “Wasted Days,” rising up below crunchy synthesizer lines like blue cigarette smoke). All elements of the city are here — the hip downtown and the ritzy uptown, the seedy ghettos and the posh neighborhoods. The city’s glory days may be long since spent, but an attainable return to prominence is within reach, so long as its residents are willing to fight for its rebirth.