"It's time to make a change."
Robbie Fulks
begins his 2025 album
Now Then
with these words, spoken with a tone of stoic determination, and as anyone familiar with his work knows,
Fulks
is not a man averse to switching things up. He's happy to jump from the acid-tinged alt-country of
Country Love Songs
(1996) to the rock & roll bombast of
Let's Kill Saturday Night
(1998) and the Nashville polish of
Georgia Hard
(2005). He enjoyed some of the best reviews of his career with a pair of spare, literate acoustic efforts,
Gone Away Backward
(2013) and
Upland Stories
(2016), and followed them with a splendid love letter to bluegrass, 2023's
Bluegrass Vacation
. But
is a stylistically diverse set of songs that makes room for occasional bursts of electric ruckus and lots of adult-alternative melodic detours and a tone that's more mature pop with a slight twang than what can strictly be called country. The arrangements and production are full-bodied and imaginative, and of all of
' albums, the one that most closely resembles
is 2001's
Couple in Trouble
in terms of its deep-focus narratives and broad range of musical backdrops. After opening with "Workin' No More Blues," where he decides the world is changing more than he likes and he's going to stay comfortably mired in the past, most of
is devoted to episodes presumably taken from his own life -- semi-happy memories of family vacations in "Ocean City," the hard punch of abrupt changes in "Now Now Now Now Now," a journey with unfortunate consequences in "That Was Juarez, This Is Alpine," the many wins and occasional losses of a long-term relationship in "The Thirty-Year Marriage," and a snarky tribute to being smarter than those around you in "Poor and Sharp-Witted." As a storyteller, at his best
is every bit as good as
Raymond Carver
(and often funnier), and if he sometimes plays a bit too strongly to the last row of the hall, there's no arguing he's a vital and savvy entertainer. With a band including
Wayne Horvitz
on keys,
T-Bone Burnett
associate
Jay Bellerose
and
Elvis Costello
sideman
Pete Thomas
on drums,
Bonnie Raitt
's guitarist
Duke Levine
, and
Jenny Scheinman
on fiddle,
has musicians who are more than capable of executing his ideas with the skill he deserves, and
Tucker Martine
's mix gives the recordings a welcome warmth and clarity.
makes albums with an ambition and intelligence few songwriters in any genre can approach these days, and even at their darkest, his songs are compelling and consistently entertaining.
sees him stretching even further than usual, and folks who think they won't like
because he's "alt-country" ought to hear this and have their expectations happily upended. ~ Mark Deming