Not enough backing its darkness
What a fantastic title that is more evocative than anything on the record. It is admirable to try to emulate Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska with its vignettes of debauchery and tragedy set to a raw, spare musical backing. Still, Chris Canterbury does not quite reach those heights. He has the voice and music for such a vision, but not the delivery or writing.
Canterbury has always dwelled in misery and treaded water between country and folk. Quaalude Lullabies lives up to its title by stripping away the sizzling distortion of “Broken Man” or the brighter pedal steel of “Refinery Town.” While “Over The Line” kicks up the tempo and “Heartache for Hire” throws in a brief muscular solo, these are exceptions to a fragile, morose record. Melancholic acoustics and pronounced organ are the only components of “Felt the Same,” “Fall Apart,” and “Back on the Pills.” There’s enough variety in the injection of piano into “Sweet Maria” and accordion on “Yellow Mama” to prevent the album from getting stale. Canterbury is always given enough space in the mix to shine.
Sadly, he does not meet the moment. Canterbury’s presence on Quaalude Lullabies perfectly showcases the difference between voice, production and delivery. He’s got a tremendous gruff voice, and songs like the opener, “The Devil, The Dealer & Me,” create space for his voice to expand throughout the song without feeling synthetic. However, his performance across the album is uninspired. Weirdly, he’s most engaging on “Over the Line,” which demands him to be more animated.
On the quieter songs, his performance is never interesting enough to touch deeper emotions. Part of this is that the sad songs are rather one-note in terms of compositions and lacking much in the way of evolution. “Yellow Mama” is one song with an interesting structure. Canterbury pushes himself into a more intense performance to match the clanging strumming and accordion coming together near the end. Without this sonic diversity, he performs songs at the same register for their 3-minute run time without stretching out syllables or altering his cadence for better results. On the final hook of the last song on the album, “Back on the Pills,” he starts to rise in intensity before retreating to a tepid delivery. It’s incredibly disappointing on an album about topics like drug addiction and depression to be delivered in plain language and needing a gifted performer to elevate it to greatness.
Speaking of the writing, there are some worthwhile topics in the imposter syndrome of “Felt the Same” or the artful storyteller in drunkard’s clothing in “Kitchen Table Poet.” In addition to Canterbury’s delivery not injecting these lines with any spark, they do not do much on their own. He ends the album claiming he’s “Back on the Pills,” yet there’s nothing in the song or the preceding eight that makes the listener interested in what drove him to drugs. The previous album featured “Silvertone,” which described his father picking up a musical instrument that he never learned to play and how Canterbury loved it anyway because he was three. In his youthful mind, “not a single note was wrong.” Quaalude Lullabies has nothing as human or insightful as that line.
The music is perfectly set up for Canterbury to knock this one out of the park. Instead, he relies too much on his admittedly good voice instead of beefing up his writing chops or adding more to his delivery. Even with this writing, a more impressive performance could’ve made for at least a decent album. The listener is instead stuck with this self-sabotaging mediocrity.
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