Barton Carroll thinks I am full of shit. I can tell this from the way he looks at me from the back of his new record, “Together You And I” (Skybucket, 2010). His piercing eyes are not about to let me get away with that crap, but the grin that is just starting to form around his mouth admits that he is full of shit too. And he knows it. Having made this admission, he seems less interested in covering it up than exploring the places that our collective fantasies take us and what happens when we trade those fantasies in for attempts at honest living.
Honest men, like the one in the lead-off track “The Poor Boy Can’t Dance,” wear suspenders. Not those sissy-ass “braces” they wear on Wall Street. I’m talking about the wide elastic deal with big brass clips. Guys like this know they are better off heaving the mainsail than handling a waltz, but if they are going to get what they want then they will have to dance. Sure, they want to get it the sack, especially the protagonist of “Do You Want To Get Out Of Here?” but they want something more. Like the convict on visiting day in the title track, these men are confined by their own limitations, hoping that the women before them might be the key to liberation.
These stories play out sweet or sad, funny or angry or somewhat spooky depending and the music matches each story in mood. Although each track has Carroll’s flatpicking guitar up front, the supporting cast varies to fit the need. Sax, and drums rock out on the bluesy “Past Tense” while a more spare slide gives a ghostly feel to “Shadowman.” The power-pop feel of Carroll’s earliest efforts has been refined into an intensity and a vocal style that at times is eerily similar to the vocals of Chris Bell and Alex Chilton. He is not afraid to push into a range that might not be his most comfortable when the song calls for some drama.
And there is drama on this record to be sure, but it is tempered by a levity and a wit that know better than to take everything too seriously. Sometimes the levity takes hold and pushes the clarinet and glockinspiel near a corny edge. At other times, however, the light touch softens the edges enough for us to lift our self-imposed guard and get in the middle of the music. In “Let’s Get On With The Illusion” Carroll and Anna-Lisa Notter engage in a duet which simultaneously rejects and embraces conventional ideas about love while illustrating the truth that loving is in the doing, not in the talking. With soft saxophones and brushed drums, it would make for a good first dance tune at your wedding, as soon as you are out of the joint.