​North Dakota’s own folkster gleams on ‘Perfect Abandon’

In reference to the carefree manner in which J.L. “Joe” Frank, an early Nashville country music promoter, wore his hat, the title of Tom Brosseau’s latest effort aptly shades the freewheeling music within.

In his ninth long-player, the Grand Forks, N.D.-bred singer-songwriter moseys through the album with a low-key lope, spinning aching story-song yarns all along the way.

Inspired by the spontaneous live sound of Elvis Presley’s early cuts for fabled country and western label Sun Records, Brosseau takes this concept of gleeful abandon beyond the album’s name, eschewing modern recording techniques and instrumentation in favor of the unadorned electricity of those post-war 45s. Committed to tape in Bristol, England, “Perfect Abandon” is the product of four musicians huddling around one microphone, a method that’s hardly been used since the name Victrola meant something.

No overdubs, no on-the-fly mixing. If someone was too soft or too loud, they simply moved their instrument closer to or further from the horn on the next take.

While some artists employ similarly archaic recording techniques to achieve a certain “long-lost” sound (Jack White’s Voice-O-Graph record booth comes to mind most immediately), Brosseau’s decision to record in mono with a skeleton band ensures that his melodious folk tales receive their due attention.

Warming up with “Hard Luck Boy,” Brosseau talks his way through a shaggy-dog origin story, detailing with a tragic earnestness his supposed abandonment by his mother in a department store “four or five states away.” With a raconteur’s attention to detail and an “Aw, shucks” delivery sure to win over any regular listener of Prairie Home Companion, he keeps listeners rapt all the way to Side B’s run-on groove.

The cut-time pluck of standout “Roll On with Me” toddles wistfully, as twangy guitar skitters divide Brosseau’s wavering verses. The up-down snap of the two-piece drum kit and chugging upright bass recall the bow-legged amble of Johnny Cash’s early output, and the uncluttered two-step makes a quaint pallet to support Brosseau’s yearning.

Elsewhere, Brosseau’s marriage of winsome, unassuming melodies to the dryly captivating telling of his romantic involvement with his titular landlord Jackie exemplifies his fine fabulism. He unpacks the dysfunctional tit-for-tat relationship, eventually shifting the doomed tryst into an allegory of greater Los Angeles’s cold welcome to a golden-hearted Midwestern boy.

Replete with such rich character stories, “Perfect Abandon” is simultaneously a reverent nod to the odist strummers of yore and a testament to Brosseau’s unique voice in today’s traditionalist folk scene. With the continued release of such fine albums, Brosseau is rightfully earning his home state’s recognition as a musical treasure on par with Lang and Welk.

KNDS Suggests

“Lisa Sawyer” – Leon Bridges

With a richly confident voice and a disciple’s devotion to the pearly soul sound that launched Sam Cooke to the top of the pops more than a half-century before, Bridges inks a vignette of a young girl so craftily that you’d swear you’d known her your whole life.

“Living Zoo” – Built to Spill

Returning from a six-year hiatus, the indie institution drops a bittersweet dollop of noisy pop that bangs along at a fidgety clip.

“Nostalgia Blues” – Simon Joyner
(https://soundcloud.com/woodsist/simon-joyner-nostalgia-blues)

The Omaha native drums up this dusty, autumnal saga with an urban cowboy’s drawl. A bloodshot putdown epic a la Bob Dylan’s “Positively 4th Street,” “Nostalgia Blues” sighs with a distinctly Midwestern melancholy.

“Sagres” – The Tallest Man on Earth

As full-bodied as any other arrangement of Kristian Matsson’s, the sandy-voiced Swedish troubadour behind the hyperbolic Tallest Man on Earth moniker, “Sagres” is dreamily layered with violin sympathy, and glows like the credit music for an unreleased John Hughes movie.

“She Might Get Shot” – Juan Wauters

The Bohemian goofball laureate grooves his way through this grassy ode to a certain hep kitten. As if to give himself a pat on the back for his beatnik lyricism, a humorously piped-in smattering of applause signals the song’s closing and is met with Wauters’ bizarre acceptance speech: “Thanks to leather, thanks to fur.”