{"id":64,"date":"2023-01-27T13:16:19","date_gmt":"2023-01-27T13:16:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/paulfenton.com\/?page_id=64"},"modified":"2024-08-30T14:37:06","modified_gmt":"2024-08-30T14:37:06","slug":"reviews","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/paulfenton.com\/?page_id=64","title":{"rendered":"Reviews"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n
\n

Thanks to my friend, Tom Johnston<\/strong>, for his eloquent review.<\/em>
JUDGEMENT DAY<\/strong>
Paul Fenton\u2019s Judgement Day<\/em> is a creatively ambitious, risk-taking album that takes the concept of \u201cguitar hero\u201d in a different direction. Twelve eclectic songs, which include hypnotic \u201cpsychedelic blues,\u201d straight-up rockers, Delta blues and other genres, tell a single story of an unnamed hero\u2019s quest for the secret of happiness in a troubled world.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Judgement Day tale follows the classic story arc of mythical quests, as described in Joseph Campbell\u2019s textbook \u201cThe Hero With a Thousand Faces\u201d:  a problem is identified in the world; a hero is recruited to a quest for the solution; he finds adventure but suffers a crushing defeat, rises from the ashes and from an unlikely source attains the gift of knowledge that can help him and his world. But unlike \u201cStar Wars\u201d and other modern hero quest stories influenced by Campbell, Fenton doesn\u2019t spoon-feed you his thoughts. He tells his entire story figuratively, in images, metaphors, hints, leaving much open to your own interpretation.<\/em>
The lyrics are spare, but this album can tell you a lot with just a few words \u2013 things are hidden behind simple phrases, waiting to be found. Many of the songs contain plot twists \u2013 just when you think you know what the track is about, it dives you deeper into the topic or veers into something else, the gentle initial deception making the song\u2019s actual point hit you all the harder<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The opening track is \u201cLost in the Woods,\u201d with the unnamed hero singing to a young woman \u2013 apparently his just-coming-into-adulthood daughter.<\/em>
The beginning of the song seems to reflect such a parent\u2019s usual worry \u2013 have I cautioned my child enough about the dangers of the big bad world?  But later, it touches on a parent\u2019s deeper fear \u2013 that the real danger to our children is not the dark woods outside but the ones inside \u2013 the darkness of pessimism, despair.  For that problem, the hero has no easy answer.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLost in the Woods\u201d raises the question of how such inner darkness might arise.  Fenton answers in the second track, turning the title \u201cHave You Heard the News?\u201d into a mocking refrain as he deftly skewers the 24-hour news cycle\u2019s incessant demand for our attention and its relentless focus on negative stories.<\/em>
He drives home this point even further with \u201cLearn to Fly,\u201d which at first promises to be a bouncy, happy childish fantasy about flying, but a minute or two in turns on us with a punch in the gut. It\u2019s not a child dreaming at all; the hero is experiencing an adult\u2019s child-like wishes for magical solutions or supernatural powers when we see news accounts of tragedies too horrific for our hearts to process. The guitar chords that initially sounded joyful in fact are desperate. Traumatized but catalyzed, the hero is\u201crecruited\u201d to the quest.  He vows to \u201clearn to fly,\u201d symbolically saying he will learn the secret of sailing happily above it all.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the next six tracks, the hero\u2019s quest takes him to various possible sources of happiness.  First up is \u201cWinter,\u201d a duet with the sweet-voiced Daisy Szabo, who reassures the hero that she will stay with him and that the \u201ccold, cold winter\u201d is not to be feared \u2013 \u201cit won\u2019t last forever.\u201d  Again,there\u2019s a twist.  Just as we begin to think the song is about finding perfect joy in a woman\u2019s total commitment, she reveals her own anxiety about the winter ending.  The bluesman is commenting on mens\u2019 common fear about our women \u2013 that they will leave us in bad times — and womens\u2019 corresponding mirror-image fear that their men will leave them when times turn good (in the spring). That tension can never be resolved, so relationships can be full of hope, but never certainty. No perfect answer here.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Beatles are one of Fenton\u2019s influences, so it\u2019s not surprising that the hero next looks to George Harrison-style Hindu spirituality in Track 5, \u201cThe River.\u201d  A tambura joins the guitars as he lyrically references themes from Harrison\u2019s signature album, All Things Must Pass<\/em>.  The song is mesmerizing, but the mysticism is confusing. Perhaps Eastern themes and instruments don\u2019t translate.  At last the hero calls out \u201cMaybe I\u2019ll meet you on that other shore.\u201d<\/em>
Which leads to \u201cRed Tele Raga,\u201d an instrumental in which Fenton flips the scenario, using his very Western red Fender Telecaster to play a very Eastern raga.  He renders a sweet and soulful improvisation, but at the very end we hear some mysterious sharp metallic clanks, as though the guitarist musically gave up trying to unite the two cultures and let his slide clatter to the floor.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What about a return to Eden and idealized romantic love?  After all, Paul McCartney once sang that there was nothing wrong with just wanting to \u201cfill the world with silly love songs.\u201d  \u201cDesert Island Girl\u201d is an unnamed fantasy woman who the singer calls his \u201cbaby,\u201d promising to give her \u201ceverything in the world.\u201d  We can practically feel the tropical breeze through the palm trees as the guitars conjure a private luau.  It\u2019s as over-the-top a silly love song as you can imagine, but as the last licks fade away, Fenton pulls an old Beatles trick\u2013 barely audible, ambiguous spoken words to end the track.  Turn up the volume and you\u2019ll hear a hesitant voice asking \u201cHow did that sound to you guys?\u201d and a curt answer from what sounds like Fenton himself.  Is he dismissing his own song by damning it with faint praise? Perhaps a return to Eden isn\u2019t the answer, either.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSkydog\u201d brings more hope. The rock n\u2019 roll number begins with a perfectly-conceived Rudy Richman drum solo, which somehow sounds positively tribal as it summons all to come gather \u2018round and hear the hero tell the story of the late, great chieftain of the slide guitar clan, Duane \u201cSkydog\u201d Allman.  Allman died tragically young, but the upbeat tempo and lyrics insist that we celebrate his rich musical legacy.  Here and there we hear what sounds like Allman\u2019s full-tilt guitar screech — licks that would be right at home in \u201cStatesboro Blues,\u201d \u201cWhipping Post\u201d and other Allman Brothers classics, but the hero isn\u2019t copying or covering, he\u2019s praising.<\/em>
The hero seems to have found the secret to overcoming that inner dark woods — study and celebrate the lives and works of great artists who came before, and perhaps emulate them. It\u2019s probably no coincidence that the following track, \u201cStella II,\u201d is an instrumental acoustic guitar duet, like Allman\u2019s masterpiece \u201cLittle Martha.\u201d The quest appears fulfilled.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then Track 10 brings the hurt.  The deliberately distorted vocals and raspy, ripping guitar of the eighty-year-old Delta blues classic \u201cYour Close Friends\u201d remind the hero about real sadness not of our own making, or of the media\u2019s — the pain of a friend\u2019s betrayal.<\/em>
Facing this reality leaves the hero at a loss in \u201cNothin\u2019Left to Say.\u201d  Like a slide guitar Icarus whose hubris led him too close to the sun, he presumed too much by trying to \u201cfly\u201dto happiness.  He ridicules himself for the attempt, questioning whether anything he has done has added any value \u2013whether any of it was worth \u201cfighting for.\u201d No longer able to decide anything, he cries that he \u201cdoesn\u2019t know the answers,\u201d declaring his quest a failure.  The guitar wails, falling, wings on fire.<\/em>
The hero is down for the count, until redemption arrives from an unexpected source in \u201cJudgement Day.\u201d The hero sadly describes witnessing the slow death of a friend \u2013 and experiencing what Leonard Cohen called being \u201csummoned\u2026 to deal with your invincible defeat.\u201d The realization hits the hero:  someday he will be the one lying there and facing judgment, perhaps from some higher power but certainly from himself.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cohen said we deal with facing the inevitability of our death just by living life \u201cas if it\u2019s real, a thousand kisses deep.\u201d  Fenton doesn\u2019t leave it quite so abstract.  Lyrically referring back to \u201cYour Old Friends,\u201d the hero reflects that perhaps he could have been a better friend to the dying man.  Other self-questioning follows and then he embarks on an extended instrumental trip, changing chord progressions, tempos, musical themes, even guitars, searching, searching.  The artist\u2019s point dawns on the listener — life is not about getting definitive answers but about continually asking whether you are living as the person you should be, forever seeking the truth about yourself.  Perhaps it\u2019s better to keep looking \u2013 not lost in the woods, just searching — and constantly asking \u2013 have I lived my life well today?  Like Campbell\u2019s universal hero, Fenton\u2019s hero has obtained and brought back the knowledge that will help his world \u2013 that the \u201canswer\u201d lies in the questioning.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Music critic Dave Marsh, writing about Johnny Winter, said that blues men are artists who look for truth within themselves, going as deep within as they can stand.  In other words, a bluesman digs inside \u2013 even when it\u2019s painful – to find a piece of truth, then holds it out for the rest of us to look at. I think that this is what this album is about — Fenton trying to share what he\u2019s learned about the world (and himself) along the way, even though the truth isn\u2019t always beautiful or convenient and doesn\u2019t provide the simple answers we might want to hear.  This album isn’t\u2019 just more songs about girls and cars, teen-age angst or somebody done somebody wrong stories.  He\u2019s laying out for our consideration his personal views on some fundamental questions, then letting the chips fall where they may.<\/em>
In this era of albums deliberately homogenized so that all the tracks sound similar, Fenton has taken a risky course by recording in multiple genres and styles to tell his story.  He takes another chance by asking his audience to forgo simple answers and to join him in thinking about these issues.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Certainly you don\u2019t have to. You can enjoy the individual songs without getting involved in the story.  But if you want to get the full benefit of the album, you\u2019ll need to listen with two ears, an open heart and a thinking mind and decide for yourself whether you agree with the artist\u2019s views on the benefits and limits of relationships, religion and romanticism.  You\u2019ll need to turn off the computer and the cell phone, tell your loved ones that you need about 70 minutes of private time, close the door, get comfortable, turn on the music, and search, search, search within yourself.  Maybe you\u2019l find that the messages this album lays down will ring true for you.<\/em>
— Tom Johnston<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n
\n
\n

Letters written to Paul from his friend and former manager <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n
\n
\n

Pep talk letters written to Paul from his friend and ex- manager…<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":{"0":"post-64","1":"page","2":"type-page","3":"status-publish","5":"entry","6":"has-post-thumbnail"},"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulfenton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/64","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulfenton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulfenton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulfenton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulfenton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/paulfenton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/64\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1438,"href":"https:\/\/paulfenton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/64\/revisions\/1438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulfenton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}