Jackie Leven - Night Lilies (1998)

On his fourth studio album, singer/songwriter Jackie Leven pushed his ambition lever up a few more notches. While it's normal for Leven's album to be a collage of styles -- including Celtic soul, folk, country, rock & roll, and Burt Bacharach & Hal David-styled pop -- he seldom juxtaposed many of them into single tunes. Here, this happens with stunning regularity. Combined with a lush production style, it can be a bit much for the uninitiated listener. But excess is Leven's trademark in the same way it is Scott Walker's and Van Morrison's. What makes most people uncomfortable with Leven is his unflinching romantic and emotional honesty. Nothing is hidden in his narratives, nothing is hinted at in his love songs; instead, everything is aired onto the open hill and lane. The disc opens with the title track -- a long explanation of which is given on the back liners -- a Scottish Celt ballad with a killer telecaster riff courtesy of Doll by Doll's Jo Shaw. It's a dark song of violence, emptiness, and the presence of an invading, harsh spirit in the live of the protagonist and other men. The song opens with the line "Come gather round, assholes, and chop me a line/I'll tell you the tale of a good friend of mine...." What unfolds is a tale of self-laceration and loathing that makes the hardiest listeners wince. What follows is "Burning the Box of Beautiful Things," another tale of grief with a doo wop chorus, and a gorgeous pop melody with augmented sevenths and uillean pipes criss-crossing through the mix and a steely lead guitar that just strikes out in the middle, playing one line into the sonic abyss. And like his preceding album, Fairy Tales for Hard Men, Leven works through the process of his darkness with so much emotional clarity and soul he can say anything and not be afraid of what anyone will think -- it helps that he can write pop hooks and bridges and is a solid producer of his own material. The hinge of the album, its centerpiece, is the single "Universal Blue," which is one of the greatest rock love songs written to date. If Bruce Springsteen has heard this song, he most likely wishes he had written it. It's an easy rocker that apparently is a true story of how Leven and Deborah Greenwood, his life partner, walked away from each other in a rainy Scottish forest, seemingly never to see each other again. As his crooning and her backing vocal ring through with the lyrics, chills float up and down the spine...