CD Review

Henderson, Bruce
Beyond The Pale
(Omad/Paradigm)

Henderson has put together a great sounding album in the Freedy Johnston / Ray Wylie Hubbard tradition. Henderson tries to capture the underside of American life, creating hard- luck, often unlikeable characters whose lives we get to overhear. Henderson, like Raymond Carver, knows how to sketch people and action in sure, quick lines. He's after a certain vulnerability cloaked in a hard shell, but sometimes the level of callousness rings false: "I'd been drinkin' like a sailor / And my sense had taken flight / I told you I was single / You said looks like you are tonight." The machismo of his male characters goes with the genre, but seems a little gratuitous in "I Wanted To," a love song that begins "I never shot a man / down in cold blood for / taking what I had /. But I wanted to." The album finds firmer footing in the hardscrabble life of "The Flatlands." And at its best, as in the post-flood tragedy of "Wash It All Away," it conveys heartache and the will to survive without any sentimentality. These are country song heroes made three dimensional. - HB