The Buffalo News - Jeff Miers - October 24, 2003 (cd review)

Rust Belt ballads ------------Two strong indie releases worth checking out

Walk into just about any establishment that sells CDs - we used to call them record stores back in the day - and you'll stumble upon it.
A sign somewhere hovers above a section of discs, pronouncing with all the subtlety of a scarlet A that the product collected here fits beneath the "Local Music" umbrella.

Clearly, there's no harm meant by this segregation; in fact, local musicians feel lucky that they've been given a retail home at all. Lord knows they aren't likely to be snuggling up in front of the fire with a major-label A&R guy any time soon.

Yet, best intentions aside, there is an unspoken suggestion that somehow, these "local" discs are subordinate to the glitzy, nationally and internationally produced $16 to $20 platters filling up the rest of the store. A hint of "separate but equal" sticks in your craw.

Anyone aware, whether by participation or proxy, of the Buffalo local music scene will attest to the fact that, 1) It's difficult to describe to anyone on the outside just what "the Buffalo sound" is, and 2) Referring to Buffalo artists as local implies a sort of parochial, second-class citizenship.

In Buffalo, this can really hurt; with the Rob Johnsons of the world contributing to our negative image, we need all the help we can get. Particularly those of us who slug it out in the cultural trenches, where you do it for love, not money.

The advent of relatively affordable digital recording equipment has leveled the playing field somewhat. We can now say that recordings made here in town sound pretty much as good as those made anywhere this side of Music Row and Mutt Lange.

One of these just hit the streets. It's the debut effort by a trio known as Opaline, comprised of veterans of the local scene. Alex Lynne, Jonathan Hughes and David Mussen have been around the few blocks that comprise the original music scene more than a few times. Apparently, the trip hasn't diminished their clear-eyed capacity to create art as redolent of big sky, open plains imagery as it is of abandoned steel plant and grain elevator realism.

"Ghosts of Dust and Tar" is the name of the album, and I'll be tarred and feathered if it isn't a lush, image-rich collection of modern folk songs spurred by striking lyrics, winsome melodies and a subtle, ambient production ethos. Portishead on the rocks, served over Cowboy Junkies with an Emmylou Harris chaser, I'd say.

These songs, with the exception of a sublime Dolly Parton cover, dripped from the pen of Mussen, who provides the glue for their harmonic corpus with his solid, stately acoustic guitar-playing. Hughes, then, makes like a rust belt Brian Eno, as he layers the burps and giggles - courtesy of various keyboards - atop his own subtle electric guitar washes and drum programs that, happily, don't sound fake.

Lynne's emotive and versatile singing brings it all back home again. She's the emotional lightning rod for these laid-back but powerful tunes.

Part of what makes "Ghosts of Dust and Tar" profound rather than "pretty good for a local disc" is the way the folk-based harmonic structures are perfectly married to Mussen's lyrics, which are at once bleak and moving. "The world is a brothel, we're the whores/Bodies floating softly on the shore/the muted voices of the sick and poor," Mussen has Lynne singing breathily on "Cold Outside," and these words are emblematic of what emerges as a theme here.

The weather is heavy, the earth is hard, fate is cruel, and the haves have made mincemeat of the have-nots. This should come as no great revelation, but the delivery makes poetry out of such woe-begotten lines as these, from "Payne County": "We're asked to love Jesus Christ above/in him we're asked to trust/I pray with rage for a living wage/not this pile of dust."

There is a rustic, pastoral spirit in this Opaline record, one that suggests some semblance of grace. Buffalo may be a long way from the Oklahoma of dust storms and depression, but "Ghosts of Dust and Tar" makes it plain that, though the land may change, the pain remains the same. Another recent release that smacks of transcendence is Rob Falgiano's "Things I Used to Know," an impressive double-disc set featuring a roster of Buffalo musicians that should silence anyone who thinks we don't have anything going on 'round here.

Falgiano's disc dropped a while back, in the thick of the summer concert season, and was perhaps overshadowed. The album is gorgeous.

Falgiano's acumen for sturdy pop melodies, intelligent arrangements and big hooks is married to a firmly held belief that the song should speak for itself. Underpinnings of American roots music ground pop craftsmanship - think Michael Penn, a less smarmy Sloan or the very recently deceased Elliott Smith - in something of time-honored value. These are pop songs that won't blow away come the first twister down the tracks. Falgiano is, after all, a veteran of singer/songwriter-based acts, and as a solo artist, has capitalized on all that came before, from Plaster Sandals to the Cortortionists. He's also fronting an all-Hank Williams Sr. tribute outfit, which performs regularly at Nietzsche's - the group will be there again at 6 p.m. Nov. 21.

Falgiano has clearly got the goods; perhaps more importantly, his music is free of the hints of egoism and careerism - "Once I get discovered, I am so outta here!" - that plague many regionally produced records. His music smacks of a hard-won humanism, tempered by a clearly blossoming songwriting talent.