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Jonathan Richman, the profoundly underrated, fiercely original, pathologically minimal, prone-to-spontaneous-dancing troubadour, has a new album: Because Her Beauty Is Raw and Wild. It is somewhat raw and wild, as one could expect from Mr. Richman, a man with whom popular culture sometimes flirts; yet over the course of a near 40-year-long career, he rarely flirts back (okay, he was in There’s Something About Mary, but that was an ironic flirt like Dylan in that Cadillac ad). He has no official website and his fan club is still conducted through snail mail. Since the Modern Lovers dissolved, his focus has been in keeping with his vegan, minimalist, “raw and wild” artistic purity. This is a man who played raucous, jagged rock in the 70s but kept instructing band mates to play quieter until his sound was rarefied to a laser-focused whisper that often delivers ditties possessing a balance between childlike humor and something darkly profound.
He is still on the same path. By now there's a checklist for Jonathan Richman albums, and it applies to Because Her Beauty Is Raw and Wild: The title track echoes similar themes (simplicity, honesty, affinity for the natural world) found in earlier songs like “I’m Straight” and “Her Mystery Is Not of High Heels or Eye Shadow.” Check. A song about an artist that he admires (Vermeer). Check. A few songs in other languages. Check. He even revisits an old Modern Lovers song, “Old World.” This, however, is where the path winds a bit.
Jonathan has been playing “Old World” for about 35 years with myriad variations, but this one feels like one of the strangest. It is slightly dissonant and menacing, with minor chords and possible out-of-tune strings darkening the sound. The same thing happens with “Our Party Will Be on The Beach Tonight.” This song could seemingly be like “Parties in the U.S.A” or “The Beach", earlier celebratory campfire pop songs by Richman. Lyrically, it seems fun and simple, but sonically, it is strange and disturbing. A noodling piano straight out of Eyes Wide Shut haunts the song’s edges and Jonathan talk-sings the song like he is at a funeral, possibly in an insane asylum. When he repeats the song's title, it starts to sound less Beach Blanket Bingo and more Night of The Living Dead.
This jazz-like diversion comes off as something with which Richman is not entirely comfortable, and this might be the point. He is pushing in a new direction, veering away from predictability. This must recharge his battery a bit because the good songs are kind of great. He makes Leonard Cohen’s “Here It Is” wholly his own, and “As My Mother Lay Dying” is some sort of lightning-pure poetry that Mr. Cohen would no doubt tip his poetic hat at it in jealousy. “When We Refuse To Suffer” is so good that it made it on the album twice (one can only assume that Jonathan liked it better than other songs that didn’t make the cut, like “Love and Hate” and “Partners in Crime”, two stellar songs that can be found on YouTube).
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