The Paranoid Style – For Executive Meeting (2022) [FLAC 24bit/96kHz]

The Paranoid Style - For Executive Meeting (2022) [FLAC 24bit/96kHz] Download

For Executive Meeting begins with an elegy for the radical, tragic Pop Art titan Barney Bubbles and ends with a revved-up cover of Rosanne Cash’s peerless “Seven Year Ache.” Throughout the ten songs in-between, Elizabeth Nelson weaves together stories about figures like Steve Cropper, P.G. Wodehouse, and Doug Yule, laments the loss of David Berman and Adam Schlesinger, and duets with Patterson Hood from the Drive-By Truckers on an infectious tribute to John Prine.

Loaded with vivid detail and memorable riffs, it proves what in-the-know critics have been saying for years: Elizabeth Nelson is one of our best songwriters.As being an entertainer has more and more come to define success in music, brainiac rock has sadly faded, but happily not gone entirely. Vocalist Elizabeth Nelson and guitarist Timothy Bracy, the husband-and-wife duo at the heart of The Paranoid Style, are keeping smarter-than-average songwriting alive and well on For Executive Meeting. If the title sounds oddly similar to that other album with a bland, corporate-sounding handle—Fountains of Wayne’s Welcome Interstate Managers—you’ll find an even deeper connection in “The Worst of My Love,” as Nelson includes “Waynes of Fountain” in the slow shout out list that concludes the track, which itself has a whiff of Lou Reed’s New York guitar menace. The quintet, named for a serious and influential 1964 essay on American politics, is energized by Nelson’s intellectualized, uber-detailed songwriting, which draws from Shakespeare (“Until Birnam Woods Comes To Dunsinane”) and real-life people (“Barney Bubbles”). “A plastic bag, a good man gone,” go the lyrics in the latter track, about the graphic designer who worked with Hawkwind and Stiff Records, who gassed himself at the age of 41. Another subject for Nelson’s poet’s eye is former Velvet Underground member Doug Yule, who as she tells it, was both naïve victim and opportunistic instigator: “And Lou was a beast/ And Sesnick’s a liar/ And sure, no one liked “Squeeze”/ But at least we walked through the fire/ Hey, you and me Doug/ We could’ve joined the Mingus dynasty.” Musically, the songwriting is varied, solid and hooky from beginning to end, along the way referencing punk, alt-country, Big Star, and garage rock. Echoing early Wilco, “I’d Bet My Land and Titles,” a duet with Drive-By Truckers’ Patterson Hood, is perky folk rock which celebrates the late John Prine in typically crafty lines: “This ain’t no church revival/ This ain’t no public recital/ No one wants a second viewing once you chart a course to ruin/ No one ever calls from Vegas just to wonder how you’re doing.” The avalanche of real-life detail continues in “Steve Cropper Plays Femme Fatale,” which Nelson improbably connects to a case of nerves before a concert in NYC when she “threw up in a bag on the West Side Highway.” An expertly done cover of Rosanne Cash’s “Seven Year Ache” closes this hugely enjoyable, well-played set of clever, acrobatic indie rock anthemic-ness. – Robert Baird

Tracklist:

1-01. The Paranoid Style – Barney Bubbles (04:05)
1-02. The Paranoid Style – I’d Bet My Land And Titles (02:58)
1-03. The Paranoid Style – Love & Demotion (03:16)
1-04. The Paranoid Style – Exit Interview With P.G. Wodehouse (01:39)
1-05. The Paranoid Style – Until Birnam Woods Comes To Dunsinane (02:18)
1-06. The Paranoid Style – Alive And Vexing (02:20)
1-07. The Paranoid Style – The Worst Of My Love (03:41)
1-08. The Paranoid Style – Ten Floors Of Basement (01:42)
1-09. The Paranoid Style – Steve Cropper Plays Femme Fatale (02:03)
1-10. The Paranoid Style – Doug Yule (03:51)
1-11. The Paranoid Style – Moveable Feast Blues (02:25)
1-12. The Paranoid Style – Seven Year Ache (03:27)

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