My favorite album of the year, so far, is True Love Cast Out All Evil by Roky Erickson.
I'm a sucker for the stories of people who survived the '60s, maybe with impairments. A typical example is Roky's story.
His Austin band, the 13th Floor Elevators, had some underground prominence; back in Ohio my good friend Denny had a copy of their 1966 album The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators. They weren't my favorite band then; the electric jug, that strange wavering noise you'll hear if you listen to any of the tracks in the link above, was a little too much for me. They spent some time in San Francisco, allegedly influencing the Grateful Dead, the Jefferson Airplane, and particularly fellow Texan Janis Joplin.
They went back to Texas, though, and trouble ensued. Like Lee Otis Johnson, Roky was busted for a few joints. Being white and apolitical, unlike Johnson, he was given the option of going to the Rusk State Hospital for the Criminally Insane instead of to prison--not that that meant a vacation at a Club Med. Prison in Texas at that time was surely hell, but public mental hospitals in Texas were probably about the lowest level of purgatory. It's hard to know exactly what Roky's mental status was when he went to the hospital. Being in a band in which the rule was that everyone had to drop acid before every performance could have created issues for him. Still, his time at Rusk, only a few years, began a long downward slide that may have reached its nadir when he made an affidavit declaring that he was an alien.
In recent years, under his brother's custodianship, Erickson has received better medical care, better legal representation and better management, and he's been getting better. This album, (prefix review) his first in 14 years and his best in 40 years, is a sign of his restoration. It is alternately tender and furious, wounded and hopeful.
The first track, Devotional Number One, and the last track of the standard edition, God Is Everywhere, were recorded at Rusk. They sound like field recordings and their fragmentary state, occluded by noise, could be taken as an analogy for Roky's state at the time. They begin and end the album in the context of the muddlement he emerged from. Ain't Blues Too Sad sounds like it is newly recorded but it is still a brief fragment and it seems like a song from his dark years. The album takes off in earnest with Goodbye Sweet Dreams. It starts off with the guitar almost drowned out by whistling, buzzing acid-like sounds that fade and are dispersed by the band's pounding, but come back intermittently through the end of the cut.
This is as good a point as any to mention the contributions of Okkervil River and Will Scheff, who also produced the album. Their playing is more powerful and impassioned than I remember them being before, but they make an excellent setting for Roky's material, too, moving him to step up and focus. This seems like a clear case of mutual inspiration. Sheff's production is clean and warm, with Roky clearly front and center, but full of subtle, effective touches like the thunderstorm in Please, Judge. In the mordant John Lawman the band is thunderingly powerful. On the title track they sound like a country gospel band that like many musicians are trying to figure out how to respond to the standards Dylan established.
After the flashback sound of Goodbye Sweet Dreams Roky sings in Be and Bring Me Home, "Suddenly I'm in control... won't you be and bring me home?" Bring Back the Past sounds like it could fit in with the best of early Poco, the Jayhawks, or Ryan Adams. Forever once again once again reminds me of Dylan, but it's so good it could stand without being a letdown in the middle of Love and Theft. Think Of as One (which throughout the songs sounds like "think of as on") has lyrics that are nonsense tautologies, but it is delivered by both Roky and Okkervil River with such sincerity and commitment, with its Memphis soul horns and tinkling keyboard, that you can't help but be convinced anyway. The title of Birds'd Crash and its use of electronic sounds are reminiscent the songs of Jonathan Meiburg in Scheff's sometime side project, Shearwater.
As I mentioned, God Is Everywhere closes out the standard version of the album, but let me suggest the deluxe version. That is because Sweet Honey Pie may be my favorite track of all. After being separated from his first wife Dana for a long time Roky is back together with her, and the love and gratitude in this song are unmistakable. It builds throughout its length to an almost unbearable beauty, and then the last, dedicatory track For You is a gentle coda. The link in the first line of this post is to that version on eMusic, but it can also be found on Amazon.
Roky Erickson With Okkervil River_10_Think Of as One
Roky Erickson With Okkervil River_13_Sweet Honey Pie
