Some artists are wedded to their geography. It would be unimaginable for Sonic Youth to hail from Tulsa, and impossible for Oasis to reside in Bakersfield. Even schlock like Marilyn Manson makes sense in the context of originating from the moral void that is Miami. Athens, Georgia has been Chesnutt's creative crucible for the past dozen years, and it makes a lot of sense. His lyrics reflect his environment-- one that's equal parts small-town charm and southern-weird.
The album Merriment is a collaboration in the Mermaid Avenue sense. Chesnutt was happily bamboozled into singing and scribing words to the already-extant music composed by Backburner Records honchos Kelly and Nikki Keneipp. One suspects from the aural evidence that the work was done with Chesnutt in mind all along, and was handed to him to put his indelible and hand-carved stamp on it.
With a modicum effort, you can hear hints of Lennon, Chilton, Richman, Black and even fellow Athenian Stipe in the lines and chord progressions. But Merriment is more an example of archetypal songwriting than it is derivative. The arrangements are streamlined and efficient, relying on linear piano and acoustic guitar integers to serve as the dais upon which Chesnutt showcases his gifts. And as always, whether on concept albums like The Salesmen and Bernadette or in the honesty of his earlier work, Chesnutt's warped wordcraft and hound-dog yodel take center stage.
The title track sets the tone at the start of the album. A treatise to slapstick, "Merriment" carries itself with nobility, a majesty flaunting an ambition to be Vaudeville's national anthem. The song declares in closing: "Bless the idiot/ That makes us split a gut/ Roses for the butt of all our merriment." Throughout the disc, the music itself doesn't vary enough from its median to distract. Rather, it serves as a consistent segue mechanism, linking the miniature narratives together. Other songs, such as "Fissle," wax bizarre: "Carbon ends up caramelized/ In the perforated sky/ Fissle, every one." And "Smell the mighty monkey/ Trainer is a junkie/ And the tightrope walker/ Has one foot in the grave" in "Mighty Monkey" are the first brushstrokes of a portrait of a degenerate carnival.
You must realize by now that you've been tricked by Vic Chesnutt, the Br'er Rabbit of folk music. He doesn't write songs, he writes short stories. In Merriment, ghostly, dream-like images flit across your brain like fingers across pages, orchestrated by Chesnutt's frail voice and sinister lyricism. Chesnutt doesn't write songs, he directs and stars in film shorts: brief vignettes of wintry, slow-motion nativities radiating holiness and tableau dioramas of circus train wrecks. Vic doesn't write songs, he paints crude, unnerving folk art-- scenes like the album cover in which a smirking misshapen man with a bandaged head stands in the middle of a dirt country lane holding 11 roses and a homemade sign.
