Thirteen Stories
Robert Deeble

He was the boy with the California sun
That walked to the pier
By the point of a gun
And the sea took him in
And swallowed him whole
As the sky rolled back like a scroll

Sparse drums skitter in — often brushes or bamboo sticks — then you notice the well-placed microphone allowing Robert Deeble to sing right there — up close to your ear. That's where he wants to be. There's something he wants you to hear. No shocking music here; he'd rather disarm you with tone and sublime texture washes and then get you with the lyrics. This is music that serves storyline.

Storyteller Deeble is back with an essential disc.
Back with a beautiful recording. Beautiful lyrics. Beautiful "recordvelope" packaging.

Drums and acoustic guitar and strings and Wulitzer organ and bass twirl together nicely herein alongside a great cartoon bicycle by one Joel Heflin. Music quirky and as uncoated as the liner notes.

Standout tracks are the Joe and the Space Program — a clever consolation/lamentation for an imagined NASA Mars rocket failure, Jack's Diary — featuring the world's most sexy uttering of the phrase "Coca-Cola", and Peter and the Lion — an innocent, short hymn:

Warm is your breath. mysterious.
all my faith and fear beneath your silent shroud.
you draw me near … like a child

Voice undisinguished between — joy and sorrow
the warmth of your love. you call my name in the strongholds of peace
break me to tears. before the kindest maker.

Deeble carves himself a niche as a literary lyricist — he manages to conjure references to Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Orson Welles, William Carlos Williams and Emily Dickinson in this CD. He reaches back to recent musical literature as well, covering Lou Reed's Velvety vocal vocal stylings on I'll Be Your Mirror.

But (like the roadtrippish Travels with John a 1997 short story narrated by Deeble on the CD's bonus Quicktime movie) much of this CD ends up content with turning the West — the cardinal, sunset-on-the-road-ahead American West of Kerouac's scroll scrawl — over and over in his mind. Deeble recently relocated from California to the Pacific Northwest, and the move is reflected or predicted in the lyrics of Thirteen Stories.

Co-produced by Matt Wignall, Anthony Arvizu, and Burke Thomas.

-prs