No Description Available.
Genre: Jazz Music
Media Format: Compact Disk
Rating:
Release Date: 23-MAY-1995

Limited Edition Japanese pressing of this album comes housed in a miniature LP sleeve. 2007.

Folk music is supposed to be the sound of people describing their own lives and communities, but how many of the countless folk singers from the suburbs sing about private schools and country club dances? Loudon Wainwright III does. Country clubs are too easy a target for anger, so on this live album, Wainwright pokes fun at the absurd customs of "Westchester County" where he grew up. He's a very funny guy, and the album's 19 songs (not to mention the between-song patter) wring new laughs out of such well worn subjects as Christmas, swimming pools, Elvis Presley, and sex. Wainwright isn't much of a singer, and he's less of a guitarist, but he's a clever wordsmith with a real knack for pushing the inherent absurdity of common situations out into the open. Career Moves is divided between unaccompanied songs and those performed with fiddler/mandolinist David Mansfield and banjoist Chaim Tannenbaum. Six of the songs have never been released on an album; the other 13 are drawn from all phases of a 25-year career. All in all, the album makes a good introduction to Wainwright for newcomers and a fine summary for old fans. —Geoffrey Himes

Loudon Wainwright is arguably the John Updike of post-Dylan singer-songwriters, or at least the Richard Ford. Exposing the foibles of modern life beneath the finely-tuned microscope of his funny, scathing, confessional folk songs, this "Westchester County Delta blues" man has notched a long string of concise, devastating miniatures built from his own feckless pilgrimage. His puckish humor once made it easy to dismiss him as a classy clown (consider the early freak hit, "Dead Skunk"), but in middle age Wainwright's work has taken on unique power, culminating in this alternately funny and harrowing odyssey through his own past and present. Whether scanning the brave insanity of romance ("People in Love") or digging deeply into his own family history (which dominates the program), this is music with heart and bite, capable of making you smile or shiver at his naked meditations on parenthood, romance, and the long shadow of the past. —Sam Sutherland

2001 release and a return to form. 13 tracks including 'Missing You', 'Living Alone', 'White Winos' & 'Surviving Twin'.

They're are two types of topical songwriters. You have your all-the-news-that's-fit-to-sing variety, with Phil Ochs representing its quintessence; for them, "topical" means "protest"—serious business, indeed. And then there's the laugh-to-keep-from-crying stripe spearheaded by Tom Lehrer. Social Studies finds Loudon Wainwright III throwing his lot in with the latter camp. Largely composed on demand for National Public Radio, Social Studies finds the acerbic wordsmith taking aim at the likes of rough-and-tumble skater Tonya Harding, O.J. Simpson, imprisoned "Panamanian strongman" Manuel Noriega, and President Bill Clinton. With more a smirk than a scowl, Wainwright deftly skewers such 1990s icons as Jesse Helms ("If Jesse don't like it, it's probably not art / Jesse knows what's good, old Jesse is smart") with just enough bite to leave teeth marks. —Steven Stolder