Something I Saw Or Thought I Saw – Duke Egbert

“This moonlight in New York will not go away
I sit in this hotel and tonight I’m just too drunk to pray…
She said that she’d always love me
But that she might not always stay…”
–“Twenty Third Street”, Bill Morrissey

There are a lot of glib statements I could start this review
with. I
could tell you how Bill Morrissey is one of the best artists
I’d never
heard; hell, I could say that he’s the best artist you’ve
never heard,
and I’d probably be right. I could tell you about a Grammy
nomination, or nine CDs of work, or a lot of things.

But the most important thing I can tell you is this: when
Morrissey sings the lines above, the first lines of music on
Something I Saw Or Thought I Saw, chills run down my spine.
He’s good. He’s a storyteller, a master of musical snapshots along
the lines of Harry Chapin or Shawn Mullins. (In fact, my first
listen to this album resulted in me deciding that either Shawn
Mullins owns every Bill Morrissey CD in existence, or divergent
evolution exists.)

This is the fun part of this job. I get to discover people
who take
my breath away. Add Bill Morrissey to the list. He’s part
folk, part
blues, part country, with an idiosyncratic voice that’s equal
parts Tom Waits with better diction, Burl Ives with more dry
realism, and Johnny Cash with New England rather than Tennessee in
his drawl. His lyrics are brilliant, poetry in motion, and he
plainly loves words for the sake of words. (No mistake, I suspect;
his first novel was published in 1999).

The musicianship on the album is spare but elegant.
Morrissey’s
a competent guitar player, but it’s the supporting musicians
who really flesh Something out and make it what it is. Marc
Elbaum’s tenor sax on “Buddy Bolden’s Blues”, Cormac McCarthy’s
harmonica, Johnny Cunningham’s violin, David Henderson’s heartbeat
bass, and Kent Allyn’s keyboards blend seamlessly into a tapestry
of wonderful counterpoint to Morrissey’s master storytelling.

More importantly, Morrissey knows when to strip the sound down;
one of the best tracks on the CD, “Traveling By Cab”, is just
Morrissey and Henderson and a set of biting, incisive words.
It’s hard to pull out tracks for special note, but I think
“Mobile”
may be one of the best songs ever written; “Harry’s Last
Call” is
heartbreakingly cold as a New England nor’easter; “Moving
Day” is a single moment of time cut out with a lyrical scalpel and
pinned to a
card like a dead butterfly; and “Will You Be My Rose?” is a
surprisingly gentle, loving close to the album, a touch of
hope after a
long series of dark nights.

Something I Saw Or Thought I Saw is beyond most
superlatives. Morrissey is a troubadour, a bluesman of the north
Atlantic, and I’m currently saving every penny I have to buy his
other eight CDs. If you buy one singer-songwriter CD this year, buy
this one. The only reason it doesn’t get an A+ is we don’t give the
darn things.