Cruel and Gentle Things is Charlie Sexton’s first release since 1995’s Under the Wishing Tree. Yes folks, that does make ten years. So what the hell has he been up to all that time? Well, he sure ain’t been loafin’. He’s worked quite a bit with Lucinda Williams, both as a guest artist and as her producer; he’s also produced an album for Double Trouble; but by far the bulk of his time has been spent playing lead guitar with Bob Dylan (’99-’03). No wait, that’s not true.
The bulk of his time has probably been spent thinking, “Wasn’t that cool when I played guitar with Dylan? Remember that time when he said [insert Bob Dylan’s phrase here]…God, those were good times.” Well, that’s how I’d spend most of my time after playing several hundred shows with Bob. Oh, and I’d drink a lot of cocktails, too.
But it probably didn’t even phase ol’ Chuck. At 15, he recorded a song with Keith Richards and Ron Wood. At 16, he recorded his first studio album (Pictures for Pleasure, 1985), which is actually pretty interesting for a 16-year-old hair rocker. In the between time (between hair-rock and Dylan, that is), he played full-time for the Arc Angels (a heavily blues-influenced rock band out of Austin), and continued to be an in-demand session artist.
So what is this disc like then? Well, it is mostly what you’d expect from an album that was ten years in the making. It is honed. It covers a whole lot of ground, from relationships clouded by heartbreak and loneliness to fatherhood…tainted by heartbreak and loneliness. Think of Charlie Sexton as a Texan trying to write lyrics like Bob Dylan, while playing guitar like Stevie Ray Vaughn, with the misfortune of singing like a melancholy Elvis Costello. I’m kidding though, a little bit. In all seriousness (‘cause Charlie strikes me as a serious guy), Sexton is truly a virtuoso guitar player. While at times you catch glimpses the Stevie Ray Vaughn influence, I’d say that Chuck has far surpassed his childhood hero. He plays blues, it’s true, but also folk and rock and pop and that nebulous, remarkable sort of guitar which seems to absolutely transcend genre and which enters the realm of quality. Sexton is acutely aware of the fact that a good guitar player is one that doesn’t need to fill his record with sound. And really, he doesn’t write all that much like Dylan (though he may borrow a line or two) more like Stevie Nicks.
“Gospel” is probably the most intimate song on the album. It features Sexton, his twelve-string guitar, and songwriting which is pure storytelling gold. With lines like “if you’re looking for forgiveness/ you better reach your knees/ If you’re asking Jesus/ you better ask him please” and “when the preacher shamed you/ well the preacher lied/ he may say you’re damned/ but it ain’t he who decides,” Sexton shows a poeticism that rivals any of the songwriting greats. Most of all, this track shows a beautiful and discreet commitment to depravity. There is something debauched going on beneath the lyrics, in spaces between the pluckings of that guitar, and Charlie makes us love it without really needing to know what it is. “Burn” is also a beautiful track. It is dynamic and sharp, a rant on being alone on the road, yearning for a lost love. All of this comes across with crystal clarity. I could go on like this for each track on the record, but it would ruin the fun. So I won’t.
Despite all this goodness derived from the care which was clearly taken in the crafting of this album, there are some drawbacks as well. Mainly: this record seems, at times, a bit overwrought. Sexton fails at the ultimate trick of making a record: to trick your audience into thinking that it all just fell together like that. This record is so clean—utterly lacking in errant cymbal-crashes, piano-pings, and snare-drum-snaps—that it seems antiseptic. It lacks spontaneity. It also lacks innovation. While it hovers well outside any genre-specific pigeonhole, Cruel and Gentle Things brings very little to the table that nobody has done before. Finally, this record contains far too much whining for my taste. Charlie is lonely. He misses someone terribly. He lets us know about it in his wispy voiced, glum-Elvis-Costello singing style. What’s worse is that this is a calculated whine, clearly intended to illicit a specific emotional response. Whomever you are that broke poor Charlie’s heart, please go back to him. He loves you. It must have been a rough ten years for Charlie.
Bottom line: There is no such thing as a perfect record, though Cruel and Gentle Things comes pretty damn close. Charlie Sexton brings such a diversity of sound to this collection of songs that it leaves me wishing there were more. Without doing anything incredibly new or bold, Sexton takes his latest release and stuffs it in the gaps left in popular music over the last twenty years. With its maturity and acoustic diversity, this record will appeal to anyone between the ages of 14 and 80 (who’s musical icons don’t include Brittney Spears or Green Jelly), though I suspect that few will fall in love with it. It’s definitely worth the purchase price—and then some—as long as you aren’t an easily influenced manic-depressive. I give it 3.7 carefully calculated (in keeping with the true spirit of Cruel and Gentle Things) stars out of 5.
