Seven songs with razor-sharp lyrics, drawing on Irish folk, American blues, and Rock 'n' Roll, all beautifully recorded.

7 MP3 Songs
ROCK: Folk Rock, ROCK: Americana



Details:
Bill Foreman puts his best foot forward with âBegging Bowl,â seven songs of diverse styles, at once typically melodic and literate and at the same time Billâs most polished set of recordings to date. Old fans will find a familiar voice speaking with new clarity; those new to Billâs music will wonder why itâs taken so long to discover him. For both, these twenty minutes of music will immediately gratify and bear, like the rest of Billâs catalogue, repeated listenings over days, weeks, and years.

âOpen Doorâ starts things off in classically Foreman style: a blues form that doesnât sound bluesy, with a narrative at once crystal clear and oblique. The loss of a romantic partner reflects on the narratorâs own situation, physically and psychologicallyâall this, with mandolins. âBy Its Very Nature Fleetingâ is a triptych in song, pounding tom-toms and interlacing electric guitar and piano, with three college-aged narrators ruminating on death from three perspectives.

Bill returns to Irish-flavored instrumentals with âPlanxty Steve Gonzalesâ before âThe Stray Dogs of Dakar,â another slanted bluesâimagine Skip James busking with an accordion player on the Champs-Élysées. Drawing on his own stay in Dakar, Bill takes a series of images of the city and frames them with the narrative of an orphaned, educated, and desperately poor taxi driver.

âEl Chorrilloâ stands as the albumâs centerpiece, using a foul example of American war crimes in the 1989 invasion of Panama to critique the United Statesâ continuing military interventionism. The narrator, an American soldier, burns working-class Panamanian apartments while attmempting to dissociate from the experience with a variety of hallucinogens. The music takes an opposite tack, using an almost elegant folk-rock to throw the horror of the narrative into relief.

The mood lightens considerably with the garage-folk-rock flavored âFeeling No Pain (and Paying No Rent),â sending up the Federal Reserveâs deceptively easy credit policies in what is line-for-line the funniest song of the collection. Finishing the set out on a high note, âEricâs Apartmentâ places Billâs dear dog Eric in musical form, in what is certainly his catchiest instrumental since 1998âs âThe Professah.â

âBegging Bowlâ is standard-issue Bill Foreman, which is to say that it is anything but standard. Few artists can offer his particular combination of talents: melodies that sound both fresh and classic at the same time, intelligent lyrics without off-putting intellectualism, all by a musician who makes every last sound on the record, every instrument and every vocal. If youâre already a fan of Billâs music, âBegging Bowlâ will not disappoint. If youâre not yet a fan, âBegging Bowlâ will make you one.