The debut album from Alabama singer/songwriter Frederick James Mullis, Jr., who operates under the old tobacco baseball card-worthy nom de plume
Early James,
Singing for My Supper has the faded patina of a pull-tab beer can or a museum-bound ship's manifest.
James' bluesy croon bears a resemblance to weathered '60s and '70s singer/songwriters like
Mickey Newbury,
Fred Neil, and
Harry Chapin, and his offbeat arrangements and guitar noodling often echo the cosmic British-folk stylings of
John Martyn. Still, for all of its retro-trappings, the ten-song set is delivered with enough vitality to mitigate the fact that it often feels like it just tumbled out of some old hobo's knapsack.
James is a compelling and inventive songwriter with innate Southern charm, and he navigates the sounds of the past, from countrypolitan ("Easter Eggs") and soft rock ("Stockholm Syndrome") to jazz-tinged psych-pop ("Clockwork Town") with the raw confidence -- minus the hubris and bravado -- of a man in his mid-twenties. Each time you think you've got him pegged he takes a detour, with sporadic bouts of dissonance resolving into lush melodic refrains and lyrics that balance tried and true troubadour aphorisms with surreal
Tom Waits-ian imagery. This is
James' first outing with a full band -- his work up to now has been mostly stripped-down, with just guitar and upright bass at the fore -- and the studio musicians assembled by
the Black Keys'
Dan Auerbach are more than up to the task of interpreting his offbeat, Southern Gothic-meets-Laurel Canyon vibe.
Singing for My Supper is unapologetically rooted in the past, but
James is just idiosyncratic and genuinely talented enough to avoid pastiche, as he effortlessly amalgamates Southern blues, country, folk, pop, and jazz into something that evokes
Jason Isbell by way of
Lee Hazlewood or
Tim Buckley. ~ James Christopher Monger