Greg Trooper - Floating (2003)

So finally Greg Trooper gets a deal on what amounts to a real label. And while it's a label normally associated with bluegrass and superpickers, that's fine. Sugar Hill has issued records by Guy Clark, too. It's about time. On Floating, Trooper reveals once again that he is an artist of the old school, one for whom development is a journey, not a destination. Each album stronger than the last -- which is saying something when you've never released a bad one -- is an exercise not only in the language of lyric writing and melody sculpting but also in the intimate communication that is supposed to occur between singer and listener. Trooper's songs on Floating are the musical equivalent of the poetry of somebody like Kenneth Patchen. His eye is keen, looking for the smallest, seemingly most insignificant detail in a shadowy street-corner scene, and his ear is even keener, picking up the whispers and silent conversations kept within but held in common experience and spoken, laughed, and cried from. The title track is a slow country song that addresses the sight and feel of a river with all of its pastoral memories for the protagonist, until one day the dead and bloodless body of a young girl floats up and rests on its banks. There is no judgment, just the question and the witness, as also in the two tracks that open the album, "The Road Is Long" and "Where My Tears Break Through" (written with Buddy Mondlock). The former, set to a shuffling country-rock beat and ringing guitars, states in passionate form the simple fact that, despite devastation by love, there is nothing left but to move along a step at a time to some unforeseen destination. On the latter -- a country song with Buddy Miller guesting alongside members of the 77's, a fine rock band -- the protagonist bears witness to the fact that life is tough, with murder, environmental ruin, and horrific news abounding, and that one can only remain steady and hold his ground. But it's in the moment of a lover's assurance, in the gesture of a glance, a kiss, the promise of meeting the next day, or being told that one is loved that the tears come to the surface, because they cannot be contained by the joy and searing admittance of need in the human heart.