Word: baerwald
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
PERFORMER: DAVID BAERWALD...
...BOTTOM LINE: Rock noir: Baerwald's songs are pitch black as they spin toward pop apocalypse...
...David Baerwald's Triage is a work of cold boldness and romantic despair, filled with cynical, fatalistic humor and a desperate, fading hope that the center, wherever the hell it is, will hold just until the dawn breaks. Tough music's not in short supply just now, thanks to rap's street attitude, street come-ons, street aggression. Baerwald's songs, flinty and rock-rooted, aim higher. They are full of rage, melancholy and regret for fates that get mixed up and mangled in the course of everyday Armageddons...
...Baerwald's cast of misfits, misbegottens and woebegones are not merely marginal types. They live on both sides of the margin: under it, like bats clinging to the top of a cave, and above it, delineating it, marking off new limits for themselves to cross. Triage is inhabited by both the victims and the perpetrators of power -- those whom it intoxicates, others whom it trashes. In order to remove any doubt about this, the record is dedicated to members of the diplomatic and espionage elite -- Henry Kissinger, the Dulles brothers and James Baker, among others -- "in the sincere hope that...
...Baerwald is now honing a screenplay on which he collaborated with Sean Penn. He is also touring with a fine, fierce new band. They lay down a carbolic concert that may eventually include the exquisite Hello Mary, a piece of lovelorn virtuosity whose lyrics consist entirely of one end of an overheard phone conversation: "Heard you had a son/ Don't remember his name/ That's a really nice name/ I just called/ To check and see/ If my memory's correct/ And you mean a thing to me." The song sounds so heartfelt it almost seems...