Elliott Murphy's first album came out in 1973, and he's released 29 more since then. His most recent is Notes From The Underground, a classic Americana/Folk album that recalls every folk star you can think of, from Dylan to Guthrie.
The fact that Murphy is sixty years old doesn't seem to inhibit him in the slightest. His songs are intelligent and most of them tell a story, but none of them are outdated or irrelevant.
Murphy's lyrics are the strong point of the album, but that's not to say the music isn't good, too. Murphy's son joins him on “Frankenstein's Daughter” with an impressive guitar solo, and his band (which is French; Murphy lives in Paris), does an excellent job keeping up with fantastic composition and in particular, bass parts that give the songs a darker quality.
Despite the strength of the music, it is the lyrics make Murphy comparable to Dylan and the rest of the classics. On “Scandinavian Skies”, he sings, “my old world is empty/my new world is young/don't feel no power/in the barrel of a gun”, and on “Frankenstein's Daughter” he sings, “she was so pretty/and I could see/when your daddy's a monster/it's just not so easy”. All of the tracks of Notes From The Underground are what folk songs are supposed to be – they make you think, and tell you something new, but they have a rock quality to them that make them far more interesting musically.
Murphy has been making music for more than thirty years, and he's showing no signs of stopping. He's currently on tour in Europe and planning another new album. Dylan got less interesting as he got older, but Murphy seems to only get wiser.
Key Tracks: “Frankenstein's Daughter”, “And General Robert E. Lee', “Razzmatazz”
March 8, 2010
