Punk: Langhorne Slim's When the Sun's Gone Down

When we turn on Dan Zanes’ children’s album, Rocket Ship Beach, our one year-old son, Samuel, stands by his bookcase, bouncing, dancing to the mountain-infected children’s songs. When I turn on Langhorne Slim’s When the Sun’s Gone Down, I kind of get the same itch—to stand, bouncing, dancing to the mountain music, acoustic punk, grown up children’s sing-along songs. There’s no sitting still when the album kicks off with “In the Midnight” and “Set Em Up.” You know there’s a banjo-bluegrass thing happening, but you find your body is doing a jump-stomp, funk dance.

While in tourist traps like Gatlinburg, Tennessee, people grab up CDs of mountain music thinking it quaint to hear some banjo played boringly on a couple of traditional tunes, those same people would probably refer to Langhorne Slim as that “weird guy who plays a banjo.” You see, the sound comes from the mountains, the instruments are from the hillbillies, the tunes are almost traditional, Slim’s using the same tools as Zanes to invoke the front porch singing, but this ain’t quaint. Slim’s completely serious. Some of the old blues standard have lost their murderous intent because they’re standards. In that same way, some of the sounds of mountain music have lost their languid passion, but there’s no such loss in Slim’s music. It’s more than a quaint gift shop can handle.

Slim’s vocals have been compared to Gordon Gano (Violent Femmes) with its adolescent crack, but more than voice, Slim’s lyrics also talk about love and sex, passion and sin in the way the Violent Femmes have always done in that off-kilter honesty. “I Ain’t Proud” confesses to the Lord with prideful humility. “Mary” takes the love of a woman to a nearly impossible height (“Mary, are you the mother of my God?”). “The Electric Love Letter” tells us too much information while saying something we probably understand (“She tastes just like pumpkin pie”).

The acoustic punk sound definitely recalls Hamell on Trial’s punishment of an acoustic instrument in order to extract all of the sonic energy of an entire electric band. “I Will” is a stomp dance that sends everyone spinning on the red barn floor—which is exactly what this world needs: Langhorne Slim leading the bouncing and dancing and singing for all of us uptight adults who forgot how to dance like children a long time ago.

Thanks to Langhorne Slim and Narnack Records for their help.