Songs: Big Dumb Town, Gone The Distance, Knife And Fork, Down The Coast Hwy, Luther Played Guitar, Stranded, Wild Bill Donovan, Man Of Stone, Pink Paraket, Underneath The Big Green Tree, As I Went Out One Morning, Crystal Palace, Hear That Bird (Hidden Track)
Review: "Black Diamond is Ridgway's best album in years, and it hits extremes of both detachment and passion that make it a career milestone."
"BLACK DIAMOND is quite different from anything I've ever written," Ridgway explains. "At the risk of sounding like some wounded folkie, this is the most personal record I've ever made. The songs took shape during the summer of '95, at a time when I was coming to grips with a lot of conflicting thoughts and emotions; insecurity, lonliness, the need to control, bitterness and, of course, the Big Three: anger, love and loss." STAN RIDGWAY'S fourth solo album challenges more than a few of the assumptions that have been made about him as a songwriter. "People are going to have to come up with a better description of what I do than 'musical film noir' or 'master storyteller,'" Ridgway says, "perhaps we'll hold a contest."
"This is a record that I deliberately forced the songs to stand on their own," Ridgway says of BLACK DIAMOND's spare, spacious production. "The songs are, if I may be so bold, naked in the wind. I tried to let the songs flow out of my head and onto the tape without a lot of fussiness and second-guessing in between. My true interests have always been the surreal states of everyday life, the dream-states we encounter whether we are asleep or wide awake with caffeine buzzing in your head. I've really moved into fresh territory with these songs, I think."
Indeed, BLACK DIAMOND's songs explore music and moods that are both subtler and more far-ranging than anything Ridgway has previously attempted. "BIG DUMB TOWN" finds Ridgway's sardonicism comfortably intact, aimed straight at the heart of some generic hustling fat-cat, a metaphor for the slick power-brokers who populate the headlines - and occasionally get away with murder. On the hypnotic "PINK PARAKEET," the singer's obsession with another's control mounts with each verse, a vibraharp and throbbing upright bass provide a dramatic foundation.
An example of the songwriter's fascination with the dream state, "STRANDED" melodically melts from one level of reality to the next, encompassing a ghostly, fractured Titanic slipping beneath the waves, an anxious lone hitchhiker and an object in decaying orbit destined for a fiery oblivion. By contrast, the warmly haunting "LUTHER PLAYED GUITAR" finds Ridgway stepping into the shoes of one of his heroes, Johnny Cash, to lament the passing of Luther Perkins, lead guitarist for the great balladeer's original band, The Tennessee Three.
"KNIFE AND FORK" and "CRYSTAL PALACE" cast the singer in the role of over-earnest seducer and disgruntled dreamer whose pie-in-the-sky is long overdue, respectively, while on "GONE THE DISTANCE," Ridgway's vocals explore an emotional new range. On a rare cover, "AS I WENT OUT ONE MORNING," the singer places Bob Dylan's John Wesley Harding classic into a new rhythmic framework that underscores the drama of the song's enigmatic narrative.
"A black diamond," says Ridgway of the album's title, "brings to mind - my mind anyway - something strange and rare , yet very elemental, that you might find washed up on a distant beach somewhere. And you have to trust me on this one, it's definitely not from the Exxon Valdez. BLACK DIAMOND could be an emotional prism; it's got a lot of angles to it. What you see depends on what side you are looking at, or through."
STAN RIDGWAY