Spotlight Album Review: John Fullbright "The Liar"
I first heard John Fullbright playing acoustic guitar and harmonica in a Memphis hotel room in 2009 at the International Folk Alliance conference, and I was blown away. The buzz grew quickly about the 21-year-old from Woody Guthrie’s hometown of Okemah, Oklahoma, who honors Woody’s lineage but whose music is closer to the craftmanship of fellow Okies Leon Russell and Jimmy Webb. When I brought him into WFUV for a session in 2012, he’d just released his debut studio album, From the Ground Up, which was about to be nominated for a Grammy as “Best Americana Album.” Two years later he released the follow-up, Songs, and then, radio silence. Eight long years later, he’s finally given us his third studio album, The Liar – and it’s a beaut!
When I asked John in our first radio interview why it took three years to release that debut album, he explained, “I don’t rush anything.” He’s patient and fastidious about his songwriting, and the fact that he simply titled an album Songs is a clue to his humility and devotion to craft. Liars opens with “Bearden 1645” and the confession, “This chord progression is my favorite/I didn’t find it, someone else did.” Songwriting may contain mystical gifts from the muse (I think of Paul McCartney being gifted with the melody of “Yesterday” in his sleep), but it also requires hard work.
Many of the songs on The Liar are piano-driven, John’s first instrument from when he was five, and like “Bearden 1645,” build as they go along. “Stars” is contemplative (“I felt like I was something in the eyes of God”), then anguished (“Love burns brightly just like the stars up in heaven/To remind us that love means that nobody dies alone”). The need for human connection is present in a waltz like “Safe to Say” or an unrequited love song like “Unlocked Doors” (“If I’ve found I’m in front of yours with a broken heart and nothing more/Would you open that door and let me in?”).
Other than the acoustic country song, “Where We Belong,” most of the guitar songs are rockers. On “Paranoid Heart,” the most commercial possibility on the album, John reveals his visceral vocal style (“I twist my voice till I reach the note”) and declares, “I will never speak your name/If it’s not out of love again.” There’s self-laceration on “Social Skills”: “I drink this gin and take these pills/Because I don’t have social skills.”
Perhaps it’s a good-old-boy mentality, but the need for alcohol is a recurring theme. The title track, “The Liar,” a blues with a sizzling guitar backing John’s piano, proclaims, “God grant me whiskey and I won’t lie anymore.” The final track, “Gasoline,” a New Orleans-flavored R&B song, maintains, “good whiskey needs gasoline.”
One of my favorite songs is “Poster Child,” which tells the story of a “mediocre maestro and his make-believe friends” (an example of his clever lyric writing). Behind a martial beat and Cab Calloway-style backing vocals, he goes on, “He’s a sucker for salvation/But when hope is running wild/There’s nothing left/But headlines for the poster child.”
John Fullbright isn’t a role model for anyone but himself. He’s not craving stardom, just excellence, and as The Liar proves, he’s at the top of his game. If it takes another eight years for him to release an album, it’ll be worth waiting for, but, I hope, not necessary.
(Photo by Jackson Augustus)