July 2025 Recent Releases: Guy Clark, Little Falls Trophy, Jack Barksdale, Lisa Crawley, Paranoid Larry

Late spring and summer are often slow for new releases. Perhaps that explains why compilations and remixes hit the market about this time.

 

I won’t complain if I get a Guy Clark release. Clark (1941-2016) is sometimes considered the granddaddy of outlaw country, not because he was the first, but because his devil-take-care attitude and his propensity for drawing like-minded rebels to his home and tours made him seem like the leader of a Texas gang. And, most importantly, because his songs were covered in trail dust. Dublin Blues is a 30^th anniversary re-release of his 1995 album of the same name. Some have said it was best. I’m not sure about that, but you could make a great case for it. If you don’t know, “Dublin Blues” is not Irish. It’s a staple of country music, a heartbreak song. (There is a Dublin, Texas, so maybe that’s the inspiration, though there’s a reference to the Spanish Steps, which are in Rome.) Clark could fashion a song out of anything. There’s a lesson about growing up and but not appreciating things until it’s too late in the talking blues “Randall Knife” and the (ahem!) longevity of “Black Diamond Strings” (with Emmylou Harris).  I doubt there’s anyone who can’t relate to “Stuff That Works.” My personal favorite is Clark’s “The Cape,” his venture into a Pinocchio-like refusal to grow up if it means a cessation of dreaming.

 

 

New Jersey’s Little Falls Trophy, Doug Albregts’ one-man band, put out LPs in 2021 and 2023, but decided to mine them and release material more in tune with the grunge scene of the 1980s/90s, the driving energy of The Who, and a few other things he liked (The Beatles, B-sides). The result is Rehashed. If you like things layered and plugged in, this one’s for you. You can listen to or scroll through the album here. My favorites are “My Little Sunshine,” “Armstrong Park,” and his cover of “The Weight.”

 

Before he was 12, Jack Barksdale made a huge splash for his guitar/piano/mandolin prowess and mastery of the blues, folks, and country music. He was praised for his maturity, his songwriting, and his deep understanding of multiple genres. He’s 17 now, but maybe growing up fast wasn’t the best thing for this Fort Worth performer. I found his new LB Voices disappointing. It is filled with too many sound-alike tracks and his gravel, smoke, and spit vocals more of an affectation than compelling. I liked “The Man, the Myth, the Legend,” a song about a musician out of place with the now. The problem is that that too many other tracks have the same dolorous tone, vocal style, and slow pacing. Listen, for example, to “Entropy,” eight minutes that could be three; or “God is Dead, I am Dead, and So Are You.” Put simply, the album needs more changes of pace. In each track there are terrific guitar runs and licks, but only a few like “Martyrs” stand out, and it mainly because of the presence of Sarah Jarosz. Barksdale will become a major country music star one of these days, but let’s call this one his sophomore slump.

 

Lisa Crowley is a New Zealand singer/songwriter who labels herself an indie pop performers. Her latest EP, New Girl Syndrome, is infused with pop, but with a bit soul and torch singing mixed in. “Gatekeeper” is a romantic Chicken Little-like track about a man who has come knocking at her door a few times too many and she’s laying down the law. “Call it a Night” has some of the same vibe, though Crawley’s voice is more vulnerable on this one. It’s a heck of a voice, no matter how she casts it. On “Don’t Wanna Be” she also shows she can tickle the ivories.

 

Okay, did you actually expect I’d turn down a chance to review Paranoid Larry and His Imaginary Band? (It really is a band headed by Larry, his friend Sam Kulik, and a bunch of friends.) Larry’s persona is that of a man with a long white beard, and a full mane of snow white curls, though it could be a wig for all I know. He  promises that the music will make you feel a little bit better. “or a little worse.” Did I mention that the new record is titled Wombat Mating Calls? Larry’s voice is best described as robust and unusual. His band consists of expected guitars, keys, and bass, but also clarinet, trombone, sax, tuba, and bongos. (Yes, I said bongos!) “Never Buys Back” is about what buying someone a drink won’t get you. “Water Under the Bridge (Over Troubled Water)” opens with I got a mailbox full of bills overdue/I got an old horse whose name is Glue… He’s got a million of them. How about “Jesus Shaves” or “Breakfast is the Most Important Beer of the Day?” It’s all a lark, of course, but these guys don’t let satire get in the way of laying down skillful grooves. Paranoid Larry invites comparisons to Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, though I’m more inclined to say Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band. Who says you have to be serious to be a serious musician?

 

 

Rob Weir

 

 

 

Florida Palms a Gritty New Novel

 

 

 

Florida Palms (July 2025)

By Joe Pan

Simon and Schuster, 480 pages.

★★★★

 

Perhaps you've read gritty Florida crime novels from Carl Hiaasen, Tim Dorsey, Elmore Leonard, or Randy Wayne White. I'm here to tell you that their work is akin to The Muppets Go to Miami Beach compared to Florida Palms, a new novel from Joe Pan.

 

The Florida Space Coast is easy-viewing for Cape Canaveral launches, but that's about all that's easy about it. You might recognize 2009 as a tough recession year. That's when three young friends–Eddy, “Cueball” (Heath), and Jesse­–graduate from high school. The three of them have part-time work moving furniture, but mostly they fish, smoke pot, and listen to the biker gangs talk smack. It's already been a tough year for best friends Eddy and Cueball; five members of their friends died before graduation. The future doesn't hold much promise. Eddy is smart enough to go to college, but on what? His more realistic dream is to one day open his own tattoo studio.

 

It's not a nice term, but most of the beach crowd qualifies as “poor white trash except that several–notably Jesse and his twin brother Draco–are mixed race. Poor Draco. He was intelligent until he held two sheets of LSD to his face and burned out his brain to the point of being monosyllabic. Another local guy gets his jollies by keeping baby alligators in a septic tank and glass cages of poisonous snakes and frogs in his garage. Even Eddy's job is tenuous; the moving company is a used van owned by Bird, Cueball's father, a former biker whose handle comes from having done time in San Quentin for drug running; he went from jailbird to free bird.

 

You'd think that Bird would be done with drug dealing, but you'd be wrong. Bird took the fall for Seizer, probably a misspelling of Caesar. However you arrange the letters, he's a big-time criminal who shows up in Florida with a scheme: Use young guys to move drugs up and down the East Coast under the pretense of moving furniture. Cueball and Eddy are among the first recruits, though Eddy is reticent. After all, he’s never been north of the Georgia border and realizes the inherent dangers. Plus, he has his eye on Gin, a tough young lady whose AWOL father was a Deadhead and a mother, Colt, who is now the partner of Del Ray, another biker turned hoodlum.

 

Before you can say “palm tattoo,” the bikers and teens are in cahoots. They know who's on the “team” by the inked palm trees on their hands designed by Eddy. Bird, assisted by Del Ray, are Seizer's heads of operation and many of the bikers work in camouflaged “factories” tucked into the swamps. In a warped way, everyone is a capitalist. The drug they are manufacturing–nicknamed shank–is all the rage. It's like crank (crystal meth) in a time- release formula that eventually chills out the user. Never mind that toxic chemicals are used or the fact that it's addictive. Seizer's not wrong, but perhaps you see flaws in the plan.

 

First of all, there's a lot of money involved. If you think young athletes and big money are a bad mix, what about guys barely shaving? Add anarchistic bikers, rival gangs, ethnic tension with Cuban drug runners, too much sampling of the product, old scores to settle, jealousy, and a power vacuum and it's easy for chemical dreams to become chaos, megalomania, suspicion, arson, and murder. 

 

Will either the insightful Eddy or dumb-as-a-rock Cueball break from a life of crime? The novel's ending is simultaneously ambiguous and chilling. Pan’s novel makes your skin crawl and run to the shower. Why read it? If you think the purpose of a good book or movie is to take you places you're not likely to visit, Florida Palms is your ticket. You will enter the minds of some truly dangerous individuals. Social class issues come into play. Who buys the shank being produced by people you'd rather not know? Finally, it implies the answer to the old question of what happens when hope vanishes.

 

A few critiques. Florida Palms is overly wrong and suffers from the difficulty of keeping straight who is on what side in a tale that relies upon shifting alliances. Its moral is clear, though: Crime does pay, but don't wait too long to spend ill-begotten loot!

 

Rob Weir

 

Shy Creatures: Heartwarming (despite tough subjects) and Well-Constructed

 

 

 

 

Shy Creatures (2024)

 By Clare Chambers

Mariner Books, 390 pages.

★★★★★

 

When numerous friends tell you a particular novel is wonderful, the only thing left to do it read it. I’m delighted to report that I too think that Shy Creatures, the latest novel from British writer Clare Chambers, is indeed terrific. Adjectives such as moving and heartwarming spring to mind even though Chambers’ protagonist led what many would consider a sad life.

 

Shy Creatures opens in 1964, when social workers are dispatched to a fusty, decaying Victorian home. Women’s clothing has been hurled from an upstairs window, but the most shocking thing is that the home is occupied by an unwell elderly woman and a naked man with long hair and an even longer scraggly beard. Louisa Tapping insists he is her nephew, who got angry because she disposed of a dead magpie he had placed in the refrigerator. This may be true, but it can’t be verified because Louisa dies and the man is uncommunicative. He is taken to Westbury Park, a psychiatric facility in Croydon.

 

Dr. Gil Rudden, the psychiatrist in charge of the strange case. assumes the man is of low intellect and mute. Helen Hansford, the staff art therapist and Gil’s mistress, suspects Gil is wrong.  After a shave, a haircut, and some detective work they discover that their new patient is William Tapping, age 37, but they need to find someone who can tell them more. Helen also finds out that William is literate and has a talent for drawing. He depicts birds with precise detail in their feathers. Was this why he was upset when his magpie was trashed? Maybe, but what 37-year-old thinks it’s a good idea to stick it in the fridge?

 

Chambers takes us back and forth in time and has several narrative threads at work: the mystery of William Tapping, the problematic affair of Gil and Helen, Gil’s ambition, and those out of synch with changing mores. The novel’s ending date (1964) is significant. It’s roughly the time in which the legendary ”Sixties” began. Think Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Carnaby Street, rising hemlines, mod hairstyles, and challenges to authority. But what if you grew up with Sinatra, swing, the Blitz, and post-World War II rebuilding and conformity? And what if, in the case of William, you’ve not been outside of your home since 1938? William’s life was marked by childhood trauma, war (for the UK, World War II began in 1939), and three overly protective aunties who became his custodians when his parents were killed in a car crash.

 

Most book covers for Shy Creatures sport a badger, a beast that can be fierce but is notoriously timid. Young William (“Billy”) was fascinated by the badgers he saw at the vacation cottage owned by Basil and Marion Kenely, the parents of his school friend Harry. Billy was, indeed, a sensitive, shy boy who was easily bullied, upset by the killing of a mouse, and reluctant to make friends, though he was once lauded for his cricket skills. Helen’s efforts to track down the Kenelys leads to the further revelation that William is not mute, though his boyish voice suggests that his social skills were frozen after his single year of private school. Gil doubts William can ever live on his own.

 

Gil and Helen are also out of synch with social changes. Gil prescribes too much medication to his patients, understandable given that chlorpromazine was relatively new. Less understandable is his overbearing ego, overactive libido, and sexism. He and his wife have several children with another on the way, but Gil maintains Helen as his mistress and perhaps her niece as well.

 

If this sounds dire rather than uplifting, rest assured that it’s not. William may be socially ignorant, but he’s totally lovable, indominable, well-read, and talented. As the novel’s major “shy” creature, he is also the character through which other characters come to understand themselves. In good Dickensian style, he even attracts a benefactor.

 

Among the virtues of Chambers’ novel is that it keeps readers on their toes. She does so through delayed revelations that are consistent with her characters, not the random episodic treatments one finds in too many books these days. Shy Creatures is a charmer from start to finish.

 

Rob Weir

 

Footnote: I suspect Chambers snuck in a pun. The Tappings were heirs to a grocery fortune and one of William’s progenitors was named Samsbury. Sainsbury’s is Britain’s second largest grocery chain.