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Songs of No Consequence
11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
 Still squeezing out sparks...., June 20, 2005
You can count on Graham Parker to deliver the goods without grousing about it a la Van Morrison, or being just too precious for his own self a la Declan MacManus, and on this vitriolic and venomous release Parker's slings his poisoned arrows on target and with a beat you can dance to. I've enjoyed his momentary bucolic moments as much as trhe revved up rockers, and this fall squarely in the latter category. Recorded in tony Bryn Mawr, a more incongruous place for GP I can not imagine, the ambient sound is full and immediate and Parkers enlists an able ensemble of Main Line band mates to carry off the mission at hand. They are very much on the page with GP and each track crackles, pops, spits fire.
"Vanity Press" is classic bile with a steady beat and "Bad Chardonnay" casts the career of an aging rocker in proper focus way beyond the petulant whining of the fatuous Van. "She swallows It" uses sexual metaphor for the way some women will enable a liar to perpetuate his bad behaviour. You get the picture: Graham tackles the underbelly of common life with a sharp, incisive, sometimes ironic and always pointed approach.
One of the other things you can count on is that Parker has an unerringly bad taste in cover graphics. While not as bad as ACID BUBBLEGUM, this CD booklet is a real horror. But that what makes Parker such an enjoyable listen. He'll never accede to glamour and PR. He's a right prickly bramble and God Bless Him for it.
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
 Truly, I Wanted To Believe It's As Good As Everyone Says, But..., July 26, 2005
I'm afraid I must be the first contrarian among the initial reviewers and report a lukewarm reaction to Graham Parker's latest. I think that there's so much hunger out there for GP to make a real rockin' album like back in the glory days, that people will seize on anything with a solid beat and hail it as a grand return to form. To my ears, "Songs Of No Consequence" just doesn't live up to the high hopes and high praises it has received.
Fundamentally, there are 2 reasons why this CD is only so-so. First, the Figgs just lack the firepower to pull off a great GP rock album. They are perfectly competent, but they can only approximate the solid crunch and stinging guitar leads of GP's best albums, both with and without The Rumour. The perfect example is the new reggae song "Evil", which sounds remarkably similar to the classic "Don't Ask Me Questions", only the lead guitar has nowhere near the bite of the earlier tune. This CD is in fact much more similar in sound to the fairly recent "Acid Bubblegum" than to any of Graham's pre-"Mona Lisa's Sister" efforts.
The second concern is the songs themselves. In the past decade or two Graham has grown to become a superlative songwriter, but his best efforts have tended to be mature tales of mid-life love, parenting, and growing comfortable with the march of time. He's usually presented these songs in quiet, stripped down settings that were appropriate but could become bland over the course of a full album. But on "Acid Bubblegum" he showed that he could present these types of songs in a more rock 'n' roll context and make it work. Graham doesn't really try much to adapt his best lyrical capabilities to a rock setting on "Songs Of No Consequence". And maybe the title is telling us he knows it. Instead he gives us a set of underwritten songs that highlight his Angry Man persona, venting over various targets such as duplicitous lovers, vacuous former hipsters and tabloid journalism. Not that that couldn't have been great too. But it isn't. These lyrics sound rushed and often clunky rather than insightful.
Still, some songs stand out as worthy additions to the GP canon. The best cut is probably the one with the best lyrics, "Dislocated Life". "Chloroform" rocks convincingly, "Did Everybody Just Get Old?" displays Graham's characteristic wit to good effect, "Go Little Jimmy" is a nice bluesy diversion, and "Suck 'N' Blow" romps.
Overall - an enjoyable CD, but not the tour de force others have presented it as.
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Customer Reviews
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Good Parker, January 31, 2006
If you like G Parker you'll like also this album.
Maybe not one of the best, but good too.
Sound is the same that we love on this good artist.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Acid-Tinged Lyrics & A Rockin' Band , November 9, 2005
Graham Parker has for years been a prolific, if underrated songwriter, carving out his own space for songs that are definitely not for pop radio. Yet, Parker has the structure down, and tears it apart as he goes.
Since being signed to Bloodshot Records (a Chicago based roots label), Parker has had some solid output (the recent "Your Country" another great one), and "Songs of No Consequence" will continue that.
Pairing again with the Figgs (ironically a Graham Parker tribute band when he met up with them), the man again amazes with a sneering, cutting and very direct look at the world around him. "Vanity Press" should be a hit, but of course the US radio stations will never play it (it would hit too close to home for the media companies that run them). "Leave your conscience on the editor's desk," Parker says, and how true (as a former journalist I was on the fringes of it, and sometimes I felt like I had to...hated it).
"Go Little Jimmy" is an upbeat bluesy track with a lot of harp, very nice...other good ones include "Dislocated Life," "Bad Chardonnay" and "Did Everybody Just Get Old?"
Parker fans and people looking for something more than the syrupy pop-rock songs will not be disappointed here.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 SONGS OF CONSEQUENCE, August 31, 2005
I saw Graham Parker at Moe's Alley in Santa Cruz this past month. I'd forgotten how smooth his voice is. Just him and the guitarist from his new band the Figgs (the name escapes me now but I think he used to be with the FIXX. Starting out with "Watch the Moon go Down" followed by a mix of old and new. Was great to see him again and good to see him in a small club. Just two guitars and two great voices. No flashy lights and smoke just good music....
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Graham is Flexing his Muscles, August 14, 2005
Buy this record. It's great, fun, and tasty. The comparisons that other writers have made between this record and other ones by Graham are boring. I don't know what they are talking about. I do know that Graham must have been feeling his power when he made it. I'm not gay (probably), but I love you Graham, and your new record made me feel gay (but not in a gay way). I plan to buy a crate of copies of this record and give them away to people. God bless the Figgs. Graham and the Figgs definitely feed off of each other's energies. Please keep recording together and come back to Milwaukee.
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