When The Devil Goes Blind - Charlie Parr

Charlie Parr
When The Devil Goes Blind

****

There’s something rather lovable about Minnesota bluesman Charlie Parr. His attitude to technology lies towards the ‘Luddite’ end of the spectrum and he’s crafted six albums, so far in relative obscurity. Parr enjoyed a mini-explosion of publicity in this country in the wake of his 2002 song ‘1922’ being used in a TV commercial for mobile phones. This brought him to the attention of Paul Kelly; the resultant tour around Oz acquainted Parr with that other infamous Kelly, Ned. And so it is that the bushranger is invoked alongside an iconic American outlaw on this album’s opening track, ‘I Dreamed I Saw Jesse James Last Night’.

As with Paul, Parr is firmly on the side of the underdog, the outlaw and the ruined, spinning his yarns of big skies and long memories with wry economy. Take the hapless farmer on ‘South of Austin, North of Lyle’ for instance, who happily grows corn, ‘sips his whisky and smokes his pipe’, before hanging himself when the bank forecloses. The songs are filled with a keen awareness of the weight of history – Parr tells of the Indian massacre at Wounded Knee in ‘1890’ with almost documentary horror, and a voice hoarse from grief and disgust.

With his own songs appropriately complemented here by traditionals ‘Ain’t No Grave (Gonna Hold My Body Down)’ and ‘Turpentine Farm’, Parr’s blues feel lived-in, his delivery unaffected, the traditional forms worn lightly by a bloke who’s made them his own.

When The Devil Goes Blind is an album of unpretentious grace and a generous, expansive sincerity – it just makes you wanna give the great shaggy fella a hug.


First published in The Brag, Iss. 379, September 13th 2010