Curtis Eller’s American Circus "Wirewalkers and Assassins" (2008)

EERIE AND CARNIVALESQUE

• Curtis Eller, self-described “yodeling banjo player” has been a fixture of the New York oldtimey scene for awhile. Wirewalkers and Assassins is his album from 2008, and it’s brilliant, one of the best in recent years, with a frequently eerie, carnivalesque feel. Eller sings in a strong, unaffected voice, really knows his history and has a knack for an offhandedly lyrical knockout punch. His tunes span the oldtime Americana spectrum, with elements of country, vaudeville and a lot of blues. The album's production is smartly rustic and minimalist, mostly just Eller’s voice and banjo backed by a rhythm section with occasional excellent lapsteel guitar by Gary Langol. It kicks off on a particularly auspicious note with Eller’s best song, the haunting, apocalyptic "After The Soil Fails".

• Sung from the point of view of a Sarah Palin type, "John Wilkes Booth (Don’t Make Us Beg)" effectively shines a light on the kind of psychology that would drive someone to murder a Lincoln or a Kennedy. Amy Kohn’s accordion and a choir of women singing backup sweetens the sarcasm. The slow, lapsteel-driven 3/4 ballad Hartford Circus Fire, 1944 commemorates one of Connecticut’s blacker days. “The maestro kept a short leash on the band,” Eller sings nonchalantly early on, “Except for the nightmares and the coughing, it’s like the circus never passed through.” Sugar For The Horses is a fast, cynical minor key shuffle that wouldn’t be out of place in the Jack Grace songbook. "Sweatshop Fire" is another scorching, cynical, minor-key barn-burner with a murderous lapsteel solo from Langol.

• The circus fire motif returns in "Plea Of The Aerialist’s Wife", a blackly humorous, straight-up country number told from the perspective of a woman who wants her man off the wire before he gets killed. "Firing Squad" is another dark, lickety-split, brilliantly lyrical number that evokes LJ Murphy at his most sardonic. “It’s just another blackout for New York City, this town can’t get no sleep,” Eller rails, chronicling one impending disaster after another. The album ends with the wrenchingly beautiful "Save Me Joe Louis". If you haven’t heard this album, you have been deprived.

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