Paul Thorn is a consistently entertaining singer-songwriter in the Southern country folk rock tradition. The first two tracks on this six-song EP are billed as featured tracks from an upcoming CD, the follow-up to 2000’s strong Ain’t Love Strange.
The opener is the real standout. “Mission Temple Fireworks Stand” is a rollicking gospel number about an enthusiastic lay preacher who uses his offbeat business as a pulpit. It’s filled with typical Thorn lyrical wordplay set to a New Orleans style beat that puts it somewhere between early Jimmy Buffett and Dr. John. It really cooks musically too, with lots of organ and piano fills and backing vocals by New Testament, a gospel group from Tupelo, Mississippi.
The other CD-preview track “Rocks” is a slow, Stones-style blues shuffle in which Thorn explores the many ways rocks are used as metaphors. Definite B-side material.
The rest of the EP is pretty much filler, which is not altogether unexpected on this kind of release. “We May Not Have a Future (But We Sure Do Have a Past) is a title that tells the whole story by itself, rendering this pleasant acoustic ballad’s lyrics somewhat superfluous. “Time Changes Everything” is a bluesy rocker about a filling-station attendant who wins the lottery and the girl of his dreams, but not for long. “It Don’t Feel Like Saturday Night” is perilously close to country-radio fodder, an empty paen to a bar that burned down, leaving its imaginationless patrons with nothing to do. And “Livin’ Without You” is yet another take on the typical Thorn sad-sack trapped in a bad relationship but unable to move on.
Thorn and Billy Maddox, his songwriting and producing partner, have demonstrated their sure knack for writing entertaining songs about clueless losers-at-love. They show some real potential for moving beyond that staple with the opening track. A few more like “Fireworks Stand” that go beyond their usual themes would be welcome.
(Perpetual Obscurity, 2001)
