Curtis Eller’s American Circus - Another Nice Mess (2024)

Quirky, interesting and original themes backed by sparse banjo-picking. You get the feeling that Curtis Eller is a truly larger-than-life character. “Another Nice Mess”, his eighth full-length album, takes you aback with the originality of its quirky, eccentric, devil-may-care lyrics. It feels as if Eller has lots to say and the need to say it. Appealing to an audience seems like a secondary issue, although the end result is words that demand your attention.

Eller often has historical figures in his songs and this album is no different. He recounts for instances seeing film star Fay Wray while queuing up to watch the original King Kong movie, in which she starred. But he also deals with contemporary issues and one example of this is with ‘We Know This By Heart’, which brilliantly conveys the weary recognition of the horror of a school shooting: “familiar as the ridges on the edge of a dime”.

Musically, it is sparse, with Eller slow-picking his banjo as the background to the songs, creating a real tension in his work. It is unlike most americana, although there are slight echoes of Johnny Dowd in the arrangements and vocals. You wouldn’t call it catchy. Bass and percussion accompany the banjo with flute, sax, violin and viola being added at various times to add colour. Eller’s vocal is complemented very effectively by Stacy Wolfson. Highlights musically include ‘Conscientious Objector’ with its gentle groove and ‘Time Moves Slow’, which has a stirring chorus.

But it is the humanity in the lyrics that grabs you. The title track concerns the deep friendship between Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. After Ollie died, Stan was desolate and wrote secret material for them to perform together which he never shared with anyone. Eller writes: “This, to me, is beautiful. We all deserve a friendship as pure and eternal as Stan and Ollie!” In ‘An Only Child’ he deals with his admitted fear of dying caused by his experience of the death of his younger sister from a viral infection.

Sonny Liston, another subject for a track, was the heavyweight boxing champion of the world but had a very tough life at the hands of the police, the mob, the boxing establishment and the public. He said that someone should write some blues for fighters and ‘Sonny Liston Told Us’ is Eller’s attempt to do just that. Eller’s father ran a circus and ‘Time Moves Slow’ tells the story of four-foot-nine, red-haired, Lillian Leitzel who was a huge star but who plummeted to her death in a circus accident in 1931.

Eller says about ‘Goddamn Loser’ that “Everyone feels like a loser sometimes” and accepts this for himself. It is a destructive term, which thankfully we don’t use much in the UK but, even so, it is hard to see Eller as a loser when he has produced a great body of work since the year 2000 with original and interesting ideas and a real vibrancy.