Birmingham Road
There's a bracing ambition in this Kansas City singer- songwriter's debut, a lyrical urge towards Dylanesque complexity and a sonic range moving from crunching Steve Earle rockers to redolent cello and organ-laced tone poems. The musical colors, supplied by Wilco's Jay Bennett, John Stirratt, and Ken Coomer, sometimes have a cinematic intensity, especially on the thick, boiling title track and the anthemic "Street." At times Black's own vision spills into verbosity, straining for wisdom that otherwise comes to him in simpler lines: "No life is lived without regret/or consolation's cry/you're the one I won't forget/until the day I die." When his philosophical yearnings take shape around sharp narratives--as on the effective "Carnival Song" and "Noah's Ark"--Black achieves the emotional connection he struggles hard to earn.--Roy Francis Kasten