Tom Russell: Modern Art

By GRAHAM REID

(Herald Rating: * * *)

After Bruce Springsteen - who literally rewrote films as songs - Russell is the most cinematic of American singer-songwriters. His last album Borderline opened with Touch of Evil, described in this column as "a chilly personalised synopsis of the Orson Welles/Marlene Dietrich film of the same name". He hammers in specific images (Edith Piaf kicking a three-pack habit by sucking chocolate cigarettes), twists a line into a memorable phrase ("Baby's packing the essential things, potato chips, diet pills and gin") and delivers his melodic songs with a compassionate heart or bitter cynicism, depending on the topic.

His subjects are generally Americana, lives gone wrong, and historic characters like boxers Jack Johnson and Roberto Duran, and Bill Haley (sometimes thrown into imaginary situations). He's been around a while - Modern Art is his 18th album - and is one of those artists whose consistency and vision means if you have heard one album you want to hear more.

In many respects they are all much the same album - his themes are similar, his melodies sometimes cross-reference - but that doesn't diminish them. Here Muhammad Ali, Stephen Foster (hallucinating scenes from his songs on his deathbed in American Hotel) and baseball player Mickey Mantle stalk the songs.

Russell movingly melds some penetrating poetry by Charles Bukowski into Warren Zevon's Carmelita, duets with Nanci Griffith, has Gurf Morlix play pedal steel, and throughout beauty (The Boy Who Cried Wolf) is scattered between hard narratives (Tijuana Bible).

Some lightweight stuff lets it down (Muhammad Ali is pallid, the autobiographical title track isn't much) and this isn't up there with Borderland or Hurricane Season of '91. But mostly this is like going to a familiar, comfortable cinema and seeing a dozen crafted short films.

Label: Hightone/Elite