The Fleury Sessions
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
The sun is always shining, even when it rains. Country rock definitely has some dignity and grace. Joseph Parsons is finding his mature style. Thirty-five years after the ‘Rolling Stones’, the American singer/songwriter Joseph Parsons proves that a perfect, alcohol-blessed country, folk and blues album can be recorded under the French sun.
Turning to simplicity is usually the result of some seasoning. Only in exceptional cases will you find it at the beginning of a career and most of the time it results from calamitous experiences. When either life, work or both don’t work out anymore. One example of that is Alex Chilton, who desperately suffered from alcoholism, longed for simplicity. Another example is Bob Dylan, who had a motorcycle accident and after literally went into a basement to record the ‘Basement Tapes’ together with The Band.
The spirit of that music was first spread by people who couldn’t play anything else than country and blues and who dedicated their, often very short, lives to that one thing. Those were people who didn’t have the opportunity to try something new. Their mission was accomplished with the invention of what we today call, Americana. Their most important representatives are Robert Johnson and Hank Williams.
While listening to Joseph Parsons’ ‘The Fleury Sessions’, one could call it just one of those contemporary Americana-records from the singer/songwriter genre and not see much more in it if, Parsons’ development wasn’t so interesting or this album was not such a masterpiece.
‘The Fleury Sessions’, the quick follow-up to ‘The Vagabond Tales’, was recorded in the small French village Fleury En Bierre after a very long European tour. It is, by itself, proof that blues, country and folk are not tied to a location, but can be made where totally different music comes from. The ‘Rolling Stones’ made the all time example for that with their ‘Exile On Main Street’, which they recorded in southern France.
Joseph Parsons and his band were probably not living as luxuriously as the Stones, but the working conditions must have been decent, because the ‘Sessions’ has a very relaxed feeling, which, even in this genre, is rarely found and is usually the result of a longer-lasting self-discovery process. Because Joseph Parsons, born in 1964 and famous for quality rock - at least to the people who know his kind of music - was wandering through styles and countries, before he found his unique, relaxed, self-confident way. During the 80’s, Parsons, from Philadelphia, was travelling around between east and west coasts. In 1991 he worked for children’s causes in Baghdad. After that he had different bands and then landed at the, in many ways deserving record label, ‘Blue Rose Records’, located in the Swabian village Abstatt. A label that still knows the meaning of the words ‘Artist Development’. Joseph Parsons couldn’t make the hit parades with any of his albums, for his music is too multi-dimensional. His music has elements of Delta Blues as well as even trip-hop and he shouldn’t be insulted that people compare his music to Dylan and ‘Massive Attack’ in the same breath. Parsons’ self titled record from 1999 is a good example of how relaxed everything can be put together today, given that there is a foundation for that, which Parsons always had in Folk and Country rock.
If the 1999 record sounded a bit undecided, his “The Vagabond Tales” from 2005 sounded much more consistent. Although Parsons sounded a little like the hit parade band ‘Foreigner’, the acoustic sounds and the propensity to ballad-ize sounds on the new CD headed towards Americana with more sentiment and introspection, lyrically. Maybe a little conventional and safe, the straight forward production including memorable melodies. Special mention should go to ‘Angel’ and ‘Good or Bad’, because they reach, from time to time, a hymn-like and pastoral direction.
‘The Fleury Sessions’ is part of a spirit that Emmylou Harris once described like this: “First I sung country music only because of the feeling. Then I realized how much content is in the lyrics, too. It’s a tightrope between sentimentalism and banality on the one hand and sincerity and being close to reality on the other hand. All this includes some sublimeness and grace.” Is it sublime and graceful when a man calls himself a fool because he’s drinking too much with his friends and because he’s got problems with love? It’s the classic, and maybe even the only, topic in country music that Parsons is singing about here. Because of just one song, ‘Fool Again’, this record is worth buying. ‘Fool Again’ is a song in which music, lyrics and Parsons’ enjoyably quiet vocals are perfectly in step with each other – a miracle in country folk - which comes along only once every few years.
But the other songs are almost as good, and that’s the amazing thing about this perfectly resilient and crystal clear album production. ‘Sun Gonna Shine’ takes sunshine as a metaphor for life, which is very rare in Country Music. ‘Taken By Surprise’, ‘King Of Baltimore’ and ‘All The Love’ are rousing, yet always under control mid and up-tempo songs; relaxing, powerful, but all the time with the mood of a Confederate disaster awaiting. Parsons should know about this from his roots in Louisiana, where he recorded his first record.
So, this is the mature style of Joseph Parsons, even if it seems to be a little early for a word like that. Let’s leave it like that: he couldn’t get much more mature.
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Translation by Christian Böhm
Edo Reents - Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung