Paul Baribeau – S/T
Plan-it-X Records
The album opens with “Tablecloth,” a song which, if described as “sparsely arranged,” would take to its bones more meat than it actually supports. To wit, young Paul lets his pipes take care of any and all melody on the track, framing his quaky voice with the plunking beat of an open palm against the body of a guitar. Sounds rather charming, I know, but even with the cut clocking in at around a minute or so, it seems to go on for far too long about some skirt his girlfriend made from a checkered tablecloth. (“Jesus Christ,” I suddenly think to myself, “that must’ve been a fucking ugly skirt.”) Anyway, Baribeau’s voice being not exactly operatic in caliber, there’s little here to distract one’s attention from the lyrics: and one might begin to question whether this whole affair is some sort of parody of the genre. Honestly, sentiments such as, “Sometimes I wish I could just chop off the chunk of my life that I wasted on you,” might just be better off left stowed in the marbled notebook from 7th grade.
Don’t abandon all hope for Paulie, though, because after this lack-luster opener comes some of the most genuinely sripped-down and catchy pop I’ve heard in awhile. Utilizing nothing more than his voice and a guitar for the duration, Baribeau embarks straight-away upon a search for his lost love through investigations of a thunder storm, a pile of snow, the center of an ice cube. I mean, talk about the ephemeral quality of memory and love! Shit! And if the second track doesn’t quite make up for the first, the third should do the trick. Dealing with past failure and half-ass attempts at resurrection, “Only babies cry” will have you humming the chorus for the next full day. Believe it, you jaded hipster: Paul teeters precariously on the brink of the maudlin, yet maintains his balance. And if the eighth track doesn’t rob you of your breath, well then, you must’ve been a pretty frigid motherfucker to begin with.
Yes, yes, yes, though the lyrics ocassionally come off like sappy diary edits, the raw, confessional nature of the recording wins the listener over in the end. But hey, if it doesn’t, it should at least taunt you into writing your own damaged ode to fallibility, naive energy, and the hideous fucking process of waiting out the years. As P.B. says, “After everyone’s gone, I just plug the guitar in.” And that’s really the final allure about this disc. It is not performance. Unplanned, halting, and marked with regretable turns of phrase, it approaches the tone of a late-night conversation. In a media age of Auto-tune technologies and stitched up sound bites, this album communicates volumes.
Review written by Peter Moysaenko
Posted under Hometown
This post was written by MyFriendCleveland on September 11, 2006
