Too Much Love
Goner Records
2004
Best Records
2014
I'M Your Man
Goner Records
2007
Sucker
Goner Records
2010
The Fuzz
Munster Records
2014
Not too many people can make maturity and mundanity sound attractive or, god forbid, sexy, but Harlan T. Bobo, age unknown, certainly can. I'm Your Man is only his second album, but already he manages to sound genuinely world-weary, if not (he'll admit) particularly wise. On the jauntily strummy title track, he seduces a woman by saying he'll treat her kids like his own-- an almost comic understatement of a traditional blues come-on. Bobo doesn't even try to pass himself off as anything but a fixer-upper: "I skip parties and dodge all your friends," he sings candidly, the line evoking a scene of desperate passes and lowered expectations. Likewise, the remark "A pragmatic woman is the only kinda woman can make a good man outta me," from "Pragmatic Woman", implies overdrawn checking accounts, messy rooms, and a woman with a big job on her hands.
Singing in a grainy barroom tenor that barely suppresses his ironies, irritations, and mannish-boy insecurities, Bobo sees the humor in these lyrics, but never plays his songs strictly for laughs. The album suggests that he knows he's been wasting his time and has fewer opportunities because of it: "I don't do what I should," he sings on "My Life", "to make my life good." As his opportunities dwindle, he sees death looming just beyond the reach of his lyrics. "My Life" and "Last Step" worry over the inevitable end, but such gravity bumps elbows with winking levity. "Baptist Memorial", with its doo-wop backing vocals and organ pulsing like a heart monitor, finds him hospitalized; as his doctors warn against strenuous movement or overexcitement, all he can think of is the hot RN and "a time when you dressed as my nurse/ It really turned us on."
Bobo may be trying to settle down, but musically he's still playing the field. I'm Your Man is all over the place: muddy guitar rock, acoustic folk in the Leonard Cohen vein (of course), hell-bent country that pours some out for Townes Van Zandt. There are some specifically Memphis notes as well, such as the Reigning Sound guitars on the chorus of "My Life" and the slightly-higher-than-lo-fi Grifters scuzz on "God's Lamb" and "Sick of It". That's appropriate considering the local who's who that guests on the album: there's a Grifter (Dave Shouse), two Reigning Sounds (Alex Greene and Jeremy Scott), and a former Afghan Whig (Paul Buchignani), as well as Doug Easley, Alicja Trout, and local horn players Jim Spake and Scott Thompson. Bobo seems game for any direction they want to take him, amiably presiding over the crowded proceedings as if holding court at the P&H. The result is a homegrown album that ably exploits Bobo's local connections, his musical eccentricities, his grim self-reflective humor, and his painfully heightened sense of irony.
After he finally pledges his loyalty to that pragmatic single mom, she promptly dumps him. The final two songs allow him to vent his resentment and lick his wounds: "One of These Days" might sound particularly nasty without his resigned vocals and the song's airy Morricone vibe, and closer "Pretty Foolish Things", recorded live at local indie station WEVL, is the lesson learned: "I can't be trusted with cash," he sings, then later: "I can't be trusted with love/ I always throw away my love on pretty foolish things... like you."
The liner notes to Harlan T. Bobo's third album, Sucker, explain that these new songs were "mostly written while courting an adventurous woman" and following her around the world. "The courtship was a success." It's a great story with a happy ending, but it raises a crucial question: How will happiness, marriage, and fatherhood affect this boho Memphian's songs, which have historically veered toward the gloriously unhappy and unsettled? In documenting the ups and mostly the downs of romance, the eccentric singer-songwriter, who contributed string arrangements to Cat Power's The Greatest and has been known to wear painter's stilts onstage, typically picks himself as its favorite target and has never adhered to any one particular style for more than a song or two. Will contentment extinguish the spark from his music?
Not likely. It's a bumpy road to contentment, and Bobo chronicles it with insight and humor on Sucker, which may be short (just 29 minutes) but suggests a fully realized story that traces our sadsack narrator from the pits of despair to the heights of something like happiness. Opener "Sweet Life" refers not to what Bobo has, but what he aspires to: "If I could be with you when you're down, if I could be more to you than a clown," he sings over trembling strings, "you'd know life is sweet." Indie pop rarely sounds so effortlessly stately. Things get worse before they get better, as Bobo drunk-dials a suicide note on the garage-raucous "Crazy With Loneliness" and bemoans his own advancing years on the folksily austere "Old Man" and the manic "Hamster in a Cage".
Even at his lowest, Bobo is never really a downer, perhaps because he views loneliness as some sort of cosmic joke or perhaps because musically he's all over the place. Sucker rambles between the manic swagger of "Oh Boy" and the sophisticated folk-pop of "Errand Girl", between the jaunty rag of "Perfect Day" and the spry double-entendres of "Mlle. Chatte" (which is only ostensibly about a housecat). At first that sprawling range comes across as an extension of his own eccentricities, as if he's being willfully unpredictable, but to his credit, a song's subject never dictates its style. There is no noticeable musical change when his lyrics stop evoking pain and start depicting desire and devotion. "Energy" and "Bad Boyfriends" chug with no less abandon, and "Drank" proves to be Bobo's most eloquent arrangement, meandering melodically as he recounts diving off a boat and nearly drowning in the ocean with that "challenging woman"-- you don't need that soaring coda to know it's a love song. Sucker is an album about settling in but not settling down or, god forbid, simply settling, and Bobo's music reveals all the wanderlust left in him.
On the surface, Harlan T. Bobo's Too Much Love could seem like just another breakup record, but once the music starts, it quickly transcends such labels. Ostensibly a record chronicling "the best and worst of loving Yvonne Bobo," Too Much Love is a breakup record whose musical tide mirrors the peaks and valleys of an emotional roller coaster. Cinematic and magical, opening track "Only Love" has a languid, nearly tropical sway that sounds like a clandestine jam session between David Lynch, Tim Burton/Danny Elfman, and Roy Orbison. Eerie and beautiful, the song is soft and sparse, but immediate and powerful. Nick Cave wishes his melancholy rang half as true as Bobo's. The simplest lines are often the sharpest. Bobo strikes a universal chord with the spoken intro of "Stop," declaring "I called you on the phone/Your roommate said you weren't at home/But I could hear you talking in the background." The album is populated with countless other lines that are equally heart-rending. He sings quietly, but with lyrics like this, there's no need to yell. Over the course of a few more songs, Bobo's hushed, talky vocal style begins to bring to mind Beck's softer moments. Unlike Beck, Bobo doesn't seem to get bogged down in self-conscious attempts to be an artfully eclectic hipster. An album highlight, the title track calls to mind a fiery, agitated take on American Music Club. Elsewhere, with dirty guitars, organ, and hoarse late-night vocals, "Mr. Last Week" rocks like something out of the Compulsive Gamblers' gritty back catalog (specifically "Mind in the Gutter"). Although there are plenty of musicians in the mix at any given moment, Too Much Love maintains an understated feel. The instruments and vocals all have plenty of breathing room. In an age when it's so easy, and often very tempting, to add endless layers, effects, and overdubs, Bobo's album sounds refreshingly easygoing and organic. Musically, the album is as thoughtful and nuanced as Bobo's lyrics. The ace musicianship is little surprise considering his group -- and guest musicians -- include current and former members of fine outfits such as Viva l'American Death Ray Music and the Reigning Sound.
Harlan T. Bobo is a thoughtful, literate, and musically omnivorous singer and songwriter from Memphis who specializes in writing about the joys and sorrows of love and relationships. However, it seems Harlan has an alter ego, Hector Bobo, who has no interest in being as high-flown and eloquent as the man who shares his frame, and Hector has decided to let the punk rocker inside him come out with his new band, the Fuzz. While Harlan's records are usually recorded and arranged with care, the Fuzz play fast and cranky old-school punk rock leavened with garage rock accents and enough bursts of pure noise that you might briefly confuse these guys with Ty Segall's band with the same moniker, and the production is powerful but raw, with no frills and all the buzzes, slurs, and goofs left in for seasoning. But a careful listen leaves little doubt that Harlan and Hector are indeed the same guy, and with similar concerns -- the country-leaning "Cold Stares" suggests a mordant variation on Bobo's tales of busted romances, "Merry-Go-Round" is hilariously dismissive of lazy do-nothing bohemians ("Doesn't anybody work anymore?"), and "When I Die" is three minutes of lo-fi philosophizing about the realities of the afterlife. While the Fuzz play fast and loose with this music, the band's performances are admirably tight compared to their Memphis garage punk peers, and guitarist Jeff "Bunny" Dutton, drummer Tom Jones, and bassist Steve Selvidge show these guys know how to rock while respecting the finer points of Bobo's melodies. (And the Dead Moon cover is a nice touch.) The Fuzz isn't going to take the place of the next Harlan T. Bobo album in the hearts of his fans, but it's a credible and satisfying side trip into raucous rock & roll that confirms Hector has just as much to say as Harlan, and can make a fine album on his own terms. Points added for Hector's impressive mask collection.