"Chronologically I know you're young but when you kissed me in the club, you bit my tongue. "
Loudon Wainwright III was hailed as the "new Dylan" on the strength of the two albums that comprise this collection, and it's hard to figure where the critic or record company hack who came up with this comparison saw the connection. Whereas Dylan was a puppet-master of metaphors during his early "troubadour" years, Wainwright III comes off as a more straightforwardly confessional lyricist; however, his trademark is to soak these confessions in a generous dose of irony and just as often, humor. Musically, these albums are fairly stark, just Wainwright and his acoustic guitar, but what he lacks in technique, he more than makes up for it with his lyrics and committed vocals. "School Days" is a beautiful ode to youth (and Delaware) ironically narrated by a teenager, and the famous "Motel Blues" moves between heartbreak and satire as it tells the story of a bored musician stuck in a small-town motel room trying to convince a young girl to spend the night with him. In a way, these early Wainwright albums were an antidote to the sappy sentimentalism of the singer-songwriter movement of the early seventies, and as such, they are far more dark and harrowing than his later work, which has gained the reputation, undeserved in my opinion, of lapsing into novelty on occasion. Highly recommended!
