CD Review

Patty Larkin
Regrooving the Dream
(Vanguard)

Patty Larkin started out as one of the most dynamic guitar players and funniest entertainers on the folk circuit. Moving in ever widening orbits from the Boston scene, Larkin just kept getting better. She has never lost her youthful energy and through the years she has become one of the scene's most intriguing singer-songwriters too. What I admire about Larkin is her willingness to stretch her boundaries (and ours) - to experiment with her instrument, with musical ideas, and with lyrics. At the same time she pays attention to the smallest details, working incredibly hard and making it look easy. Opening for her a few years back on a short tour, I noticed that she develops her shows to the point where even the smallest hand motions are carefully choreographed.

Regrooving the Dream has that same sense of being carefully crafted even as she covers new ground. In this respect it reminds me of some albums by Jane Siberry and Laurie Anderson. From the first track's 20 second bent, dissonant electric guitar solo, you know that this album is a) not a folk album b) not a chance collection of songs. It has a purpose and direction. As in previous albums, Larkin uses her songs to create characters who struggle to live their lives and loves out on the fringe of a fast, floodstage world. In the first song, "River" is a woman whose mystery and charm recalls Leonard Cohen's Suzanne, but she is beyond reach:

River let her dog run free
From the bay to where the island used to be
That dog was the only thing she called baby....

In "Only One," is a character one small step closer to connection. In a slow tango she sings "You're the only one still standing/ You're the only one who can stand me." This little bit, this grudging concession by life, is enough. "I'm a loser on a winning streak and the Circus is in town." she sings.

As Larkin says in the liner note, these are songs of people who are "caught up in the warp of change - the gap in the plan, the twist of fate, the lapse in judgement that alters the course." These changes force them change plans, regroove the dream. In one song, for instance, a character describes her marriage: "I took my boyfriend's last name/ For something to do." As I've said elsewhere, if anything keeps Larkin in the realm of folk music it's that her tales of people battered by fate and their own magnified imperfections still hope, still dream, still move in a world of possible redemption. But redemption is not easy bliss or happiness. Not even close. Sometimes it's just knowledge:

I shook the truth
Out of the tree
It shook my faith up good
But it satisfied me

Angels Running is probably still my favorite CD of Larkin's - there are songs on it that still run through my head. But her newest effort is as classy and extraordinary sounding as anything she has done. It's a more difficult, more ambitious album, and I suspect it will have staying power. I keep coming back to it. Like a book of poetry, it moves me each time. -HB