Conversations
Hunter Moore
Independent
2001
10 tracks
Songwriters take a variety of approaches to lyrics. Some use the voice as simply another instrument, another sound to add to the mix. They use words like notes or chords to mix among the other instruments in an arrangement. There is little attention to story or, often, even meaning. Others make some attempt to express an idea or tell a story, but the focus is still on making the words fit the music. Some songwriters are poets, composing verses that with rich visual and metaphorical content that stand as well on their own as within the context of the song. Other songwriters are storytellers, using music to enhance the telling of their stories. Hunter Moore is a story teller.
Although some of Moore's lyrics take a sort of verse form, including rhyming lines, for the most part they read like freeform short short-stories rather than poetry. The lyric for the title song reads like a brief one-act play or perhaps a scene from a movie. In the notes, these stories are printed without capital letters or punctuation, so that they take on an appearance approaching freedom of consciousness. This is the illusion of form. The content is not so cerebral but belongs to the real world in which we live. Not so much a Tom T. Hall, Moore writes with a dry American realism reminiscent of writers like Sam Shepherd and Larry McMurtry, then sets his tales to music.
Most of these songs are built around monologue or dialogue, giving them a very close-up and personal feel. Each story is like a candid photograph, one of those fifteen second video clips you can get from your digital camera, only with a lot more depth, a lot more crammed into each second. The poetry of these songs is not in the very prosaic form and style, but in the skilled compression of imagery and emotion that drives every one of these stories.
Moore's vocal and instrumental presentation moves through a narrow range from the simple mid-century storyteller style affected by singers like Bobby Goldsboro through the pop-music end of American musical theatre to the rock-tinged sound of Canada's Neil Young. Listening to the backing music on this release, it's easy to be reminded of songs like "Powderfinger" by Neil Young & Crazy Horse or "Ohio" by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, both Neil Young compositions. The vocals remind me of a range of singers from Bobby Goldsboro and Billy Vera to Jonathan Edwards.
At first glance, these seem to be what I call "guy and a guitar" songs, the mainstay of singer-songwriter material. The focus is on the singer, on the words and the stories they tell. It soon becomes apparant, however, that the songs are supported by a band that knows how to complement and support the vocals without over-riding them. Phil Madeira adds character and atmosphere with his performance on guitar, mando-guitar, and accordion. The solid rhythm section of Chris Donohue on bass and Steve Hindalong on drums help to drive the stories forward and are responsible for the shades of Neil Young in several of these songs.
"Teresa of Carlston" is an interesting variation, starting with a filtered, reverb-distorted sound that might have come from late-Sixties Beatles or the New Vaudeville Band, then continuing in a quiet vein more like the English folk songs of Peter and Gordon than the very North American style presented on the rest of this release.
Conversations includes stories of everyday America, reminiscences of the war in Vietnam., observations of interesting individuals and ordinary people, the stuff of American literature. If Hunter Moore had not taken to music, he might have become a playwright or a novelist in the tradition of the great literary writers of the American South. He certainly has the ability to discover and tell the stories that lie in everyday life.
The words and music of Hunter Moore should be required reading for anyone who would lump all American singer-songwriters into one bag. This writer has managed to avoid that sameness and to create something exceptional and powerful. Even those who may not like this kind of story-song should have this release just so they can see that much more is possible than the mediocrity so often seen in so called singer-songwriters.
For those who may be interested, information on Hunter Moore and his music can be found on the internet at his official website. Go here to hear clips of three of the songs on Conversations plus a half dozen songs from Moore's other three releases.
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Review written: March 25, 2005
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