she hasn't shown up yet.

this is not a joke.

“I am a recent Nyu graduate student, 34 years old with a pension f or helping others. Looking for live-in housing + stipend in exchange for part-time care for the elderly or disabled. Very detailed-oriented.”

and if you already have a pension for helping, why do you need someone to give you a stipend for it, too?

don’t be greedy.

Marilyn says: I don’t get it.

Rita says: beware the craigslist grammar police! someone sent this to me and i had ALREADY MADE A MENTAL NOTE of its foolishness.

What I have to say is this.

Martin Sexton.

He had a new release this week, a live-off-the-floor studio album called Sugarcoating. The press release and accompanying early reviews are touting it as Sexton’s finest work to date; I’ve always been of the opinion that his 2002 2-disc live album Live Wide Open is one of the greatest records to be released in the contemporary singer-songwriter genre, so you’ll understand how eager I was to download Sugarcoating when it arrived yesterday.

Although he was born in Syracuse, most people associate Sexton with the streets (and music halls) of Boston, where he truly launched his career in the early 90s.  I personally discovered his music while living in New England in the early aughts, and have since seen him play no fewer than half a dozen times in venues from Northampton MA to the lakes of Maine to Santa Fe. Let me tell you why John Mayer is such a fan of Sexton’s:  Sexton writes the sort of intelligent, honest, lyrically-clever songs that Mayer himself might write if he weren’t so busy making money and smashing chicks. The man is a musical monument. He’s short, and not…um…classically handsome, and this drummer a friend of mine knows worked with him once and said he was kind of a dick – but he belongs to an elite group of contemporary musicians who can play the same song a thousand times and never play it the same way twice. I also guarantee you’ve never heard anyone use their voice quite the way he does. For you vocalists in the crowd: he sings so perfectly and ferociously through his mask that you want to touch the air around his face and see if it’s vibrating. His soft palate may actually contain a small amplifier. He has some of the best vocal technique this side of the Met.

But tragically, it’s not solely vocal technique that gets the ladies running.  Martin’s real John-Mayer-slaying weapon (were he also a paragon of good looks) is his apparent direct line to Truth. Particularly on his earliest releases, Sexton exhibits a kind of brutally honest, unembellished, raw emotion which feels as though it was wrung straight from his heart into his guitar. Pick up a copy of Live Wide Open and listen to “Can’t Stop (Thinking About You)”. The song deserves a gold medal for heart-wrenchingness, yet he handles it without an ounce of the sentimentality which can so easily creep into songs this intensely personal..

That brings us to my thoughts about Sugarcoating (and its accompanying poorly-researched, and therefore crappy, reviews). Is Sugarcoating a really enjoyable album? Yes. Is it Martin Sexton’s “defining record”? Absolutely not, and for the following reason: because the aforementioned ability to tap into real pain, heartbreak and sorrow without sounding weepy and lame (a skill so desperately underrepresented in popular culture) means that Sexton is at his absolute best when he is absolutely tortured.

In recent years, he has apparently set up a real nice life in lovely and suburban Florence, MA, got sober, built a happy marriage, had a son, etc… which is really, really great for him. Unfortunately for the rest of us, that means that the days of Black Sheep and In the Journey, the days of Martin Sexton getting all fucked up and tragic and writing KILLER SONGS about it are long gone.  His two most recent albums (Seeds and Sugarcoating) are sweet, and exhibit his mad skills, and are nice for background music, but they lack the urgent passion of his early records which spoke to such classic American themes as “Life on the Road” and “Leaving Your Lover” and “Whiskey is Delicious.”

“Life-Lesson Song for My Young Child” is tender and all, but…well, it’s just not nearly as cool.

On Sugarcoating: “Found,” the opening track, brings the album in strong, a sweet song reminiscent of his early work, with soaring vocals and a solid groove. The title track, too, is a rad little tune – a playful but quietly-furious criticism of the truly screwed up times we’re living in, with a sort of cowboy-chorus feel in the background. “Friends Again” comes in at Track 10 to revive an otherwise floundering album, with a great guitar line and those suspended harmonies that he loves to throw at you in the middle of an otherwise simple melody line. I’m pretty fond of “Easy on the Eyes” as well – a bit of a shuffle with a quiet organ hanging on for the ride, sly humor and a bit of the old checking-out-strange-women-and-lovin-it vibe, with a couple phenomenal scat lines tossed in (the man actually sounds like a trumpet).

So overall it’s not a complete waste of listening time…but I’d still rather he be cranking the bottle and deserting the ones he loves and seeking redemption for it much, much later.

What I’m getting at is this: Martin Sexton is a brilliant songwriter and musician. See him live if you can – he tours a lot.  Get Live Wide Open if you can’t, or get it anyway – it will change your entire perspective on what live albums ought to sound like. I’ve attached, for your listening pleasure, his acapella version of ‘Black Sheep’ as performed at Emerson College 88.9 WERS…tell me the last time you heard someone crush a piece of solo vocal so hard. But please, don’t listen to anyone who tells you that Sugarcoating is his defining album. I doubt even Marty himself agrees.

Max says: “Kinda wimpy.”

Mom says: “Oh…yeah…it was nice…!”

Rita says: tracks 1, 5, 10, & 11 make it all worthwhile…but i’d still rather he be cranking the bottle and deserting the ones he loves and seeking redemption for it much, much later.

is to fucking smile.