Jonathan Wilson – Eat The Worm

I love me some Jonathan Wilson. He is a producer (Father John Misty, Margo Price, Dawes, Angel Olsen, etc.), guitarist for hire (e.g. he is in Roger Waters’s touring band), a multi-instrumentalist (plays guitar, piano, drums, and keyboards on Eat the Worm), and a singer-songwriter (this is his fifth full-length studio album). His music is hard to describe, but I will use the phrase “psychedelic chamber pop.” Each album has a new plot twist. Eat the Worm is his weirdest yet. Per Wilson:

A lot of this batch of songs is a reaction to the production stuff that I do. I would be in the studio, doing long days with folks, and I’ll have some wild off-the-wall ideas and they’re like, ‘no, no, no, that sounds crazy, JW.’ So I would save them up for my album. I’m finally at place to feel totally free to take chances and resist the urge to dumb things down. It’s got to be kind of strange.

All of Wilson’s solo albums are ambitious, but Eat the Worm is his most ambitious yet. There are lots of complex arrangements. Usually, I dislike strings as they tend to make songs syrupy. But Wilson uses them expertly and they brilliantly upgrade the songs. Wilson has always had a Pink Floyd vibe to his music, even when he sprinkled Country Music pixie dust on Dixie Blur. Eat the Worm sounds less derivative of Pink Floyd. Wilson has really found his own voice and it is bizarre – in a good way.

I am going to focus on one song, “Charlie Parker,” which is representative of the album. Charlie Parker (nicknamed Bird) was an alto saxophonist who helped invent bebop jazz in the 1940s. He was a musical savant but also suffered from mental health issues and heroin addiction. He is the archetype of a troubled creative genius. When he died, the coroner cited pneumonia as the cause of death. The coroner estimated Parker’s age at fifty-five or sixty – he was only thirty-four.

When I saw this song title on Eat the Worm I wondered where will Wilson go with this? Will this be a jazz tune, will this be about THEE Charlie Parker, is this going to be about some other Charlie Parker, etc..

Well, it is barely about THEE Charlie Parker. Lyrically it is psychedelic: the narrator is taking a crap, Larry Bird was having a good night with the Celtics, and there are references to THEE Charlie Parker – including a nice sax solo. Per Wilson:

“‘Charlie Parker’ is one of my favorite songs on Eat the Worm. It’s a fantastical and fictitious flight of fancy and fantasy. It also touches on the ups and downs of my life over the past decade as a touring musician, and more. It’s filled with strings, horns, fuzzy guitars, tubular bells, and a few bebop elements as well, hence the name. In a way, ‘Charlie Parker’ encompasses what the new record is all about: adventure, fidelity and fun.”

This is a delightfully adventurous album. Not necessarily how I would introduce someone to Wilson (Rare Bird or Dixie Blur would be my recommendation), but a brilliant career progression. As a long-time Wilson fan, this is a very satisfying next chapter and a serious contender for my album of the year.

PS – this is an outstanding vinyl release. I have never seen this before on a non-audiophile release: “Vinyl Lacquer cut at 1/2 speed.” Beautiful sounding piece of wax. I love it when an artist takes care to do vinyl and doesn’t see it as just another piece of merch.

One more thing – after gathering my own thoughts above, I went and looked at what professionals had to say. My favorite is a perfect summary:

“Let’s call it an acquired taste then, best appreciated by those without any predispositions or expectations about what they’ll hear when they push play.”

HAL HOROWITZ