James McMurtry – Candyland

Without a doubt Candyland is one of James McMurtry’s most accessible and endearing albums, insightfully filled with both endearing unassuming and unremarkable characters, where through McMurtry’s attention to small details, these run of the mill folks, often standing at a personal crossroad, loom larger than life, possessing an internal key that unlocks all the doors, revealing values and consequences that can be discerned only by squinting into the setting sun to see the truth hidden around the edges of your vision.

All of James’ protagonists, which often include him, are entirely environmentally lost souls, victims of their own choices, age and circumstance. Both the music of McMurtry, which offers up an unanticipated level of musicianship, and his story telling are captivating, indirectly demanding your attention due to their inherent inconclusiveness and their optical obscurity. Yet that being said, James does not for one moment anguish over these people, these internal rivalries, nor do his songs convey any real usable insight to the observer, or the detached writer himself. One of the most wondrous elements of this album is how insubstantial it is, it’s all hardly an enthusiastic breeze, a vision of the world though a whiskey glass held up to the light, mattering not if the glass is half full or half empty.

Others might infer that these numbers regard a failure of self-determination, a psychological collapse if you will, yet as in the song “Where’s Johnny,” the story of a high school whiz kid who goes to pieces in college and winds up living with his parents only goes to show that nothing just happens, Johnny in this case was falling apart long before he set foot in an ivy covered university, he was the product of his life, his times, his family, his expectations and the aspirations his mother will not let go of … and who of us hasn’t spent some time in the wasteland (writer Larry McMurtry’s, James’s father’s nickname for his Texas homeland) attempting to piece ourselves back together, where to save yourself one must avoid emotional entanglements, keeping the world at arm’s length; which (laughing) James manages to do through song and verse.

Candyland pointedly is a gaze across the landscape of both America and the life of McMurtry, a man who never tires of the challenges and surprise one finds on the road, where the music housed within these grooves is precise, compelling, weathered and drawn from experiences that just might happen to be real. There are nearly no missteps on Candyland, it’s a groove laden ride the likes of which you haven’t heard since his Bob-ness laid down Blonde On Blonde.

Review by Jenell Kesler