A former cartoonist with works in such publications as The New Yorker, Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair, Andy Friedman’s second studio album, the extremely alt-country "Weary Things," offers snapshots and reflection on the road he’s traveled. Friedman’s early performances included spoken-word pieces against a backdrop of his own drawings and paintings. Though he’s replaced his visual art for a guitar and a band, his songs still paint clear images against an open acoustic-based landscape featuring simple chord progressions and a rough voice.
"Weary Things" is filled with stories about the ramblin’ man with a sound similar to Ryan Adams. As the album’s slow opening track “I Miss Being Broken, Lowdown and Alone” illustrates, these are stories about the tired traveler. Yet, the tale is generally spun from a more mature angle, looking back at one’s youth and yearning for the freedom that accompanied it. Friedman’s voice is rough and strained at times as he struggles to reconcile his younger days with wisdom and maturity. “You know he ain’t what he once was/ but he is what he needs to be” Friedman sings on the blues boogie of “Locked Out of the Building.”
Some of Friedman’s stories offer real insight, like on the mostly spoken-word “Freddy’s Backroom,” a song about a local music club set to be demolished and replaced with a parking lot. A line like “You could be a sharp back-up singer who smells like coconut/ or an avant-garde Jersey jazz trio who by day smells like Pizza Hut” really paints a picture for the listener. But other lines miss their mark. On the country/rockabilly shuffle “Road Trippin’,” Friedman sings of shucking his responsibilities to hit the open road as he sings, “I quit my job so I can honk at a cow.”
The music and instrumentation vary, but mostly sticks to acoustic-based rhythm guitar with an electric lead, bass and drums. Pedal steel guitars pop up often and there’s oftentimes a fair amount of reverb on the vocals to give it that “alt-country” sound ala Neko Case or Jenny Lewis. Friedman also offers a variety of different soundscapes that almost give the album a psychedelic feel. The most striking example of this is the spoken-word “Backstage at a Small Hotel,” that features bass, a whole lot of reverb and varying background sound effects such as laughter.
“Weary Things” is an alt-country album in every sense. Friedman is not from the country, but instead Brooklyn, NY. However, he does a fine job of finding the common denominator between his own life and that of the more traditional country elements like watching one’s home change and vanish in the name of progress. The album does lose its focus at times as it becomes more expansive than the road it describes, but it offers some compelling insight through snapshots of the weary.
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Buy the CD at: Amazon
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