Vic Chesnutt could rarely be accused of having a sunny disposition, but even considering that, his latest album features some truly harrowing material. On his latest LP, At the Cut, he is staring mortality in the eye, taking on existential themes with a pile of cultural references, and still working his mind around the nearly fatal accident that left him paraplegic on the verge of adulthood in 1983.
As on 2007's North Star Deserter, Chesnutt is here joined by members of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and Thee Silver Mount Zion Memorial Orchestra, as well as Fugazi's Guy Picciotto. Together they build a sound that walks a line between country-folk, Southern soul, and post-rock, which works because the music's uncertainty about its identity often mirrors Chesnutt's own doubt. Opener "Coward" deals in dread and aggression with its crawling tempo and doom-laden, harmonized guitar outbursts. When Chesnutt's ragged voice shreds the phrase, "I am a coward," in a long, agonized shout, it's not an admission-- it's a threat. It's frightening, bombastic, and a bit messy, and it's a good announcement for an intermittently foreboding album that occasionally drags a bit.
The title of "It Is What It Is" adopts an annoying phrase as a pathway to Chesnutt's accepting not only his own flaws and inconsistencies but also whatever comes after death. The song references Victor Hugo, Shakespeare, Kafka, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Henry Darger, and W.H. Auden, and culminates in a wickedly incisive rejection of religion ("I don't need stone altars to help me hedge my bet against the looming blackness"). Not every track has quite so much to say-- the lyrics of "Philip Guston" are quite minimal, serving as a bit of seasoning for a broken-down violin and guitar jam, while the affecting closer, "Granny", is built around a simple, quiet reminiscence about Chesnutt's grandmother making pimiento cheese at the kitchen sink.
There are a couple of welcome leavening moments-- the bright organ and Leslie cabinet guitar of "Concord Country Jubilee" chief among them-- but At the Cut is foremost a dark album, and about as far tonally and sonically as Chesnutt has been from 2003's highly polished Silver Lake. The restraint of the musicians involved leaves Chesnutt's fragility at the center of the music and lends the album an air of refinement and wisdom that could have easily been drowned out by guitarists more eager to call attention to themselves.
