This is also McMurtry’s best album cover
James McMurtry, singer-songwriter extraordinaire and author of this site’s name, has been more or less writing the same two or three songs about the same characters for 25 years. On his newest album, the best of his career, he seems to have finally come to terms with this, doubling down on his portrayal of that restless middle-aged westerner wondering where it all went and putting aside everything else. The result is stunning.
Complicated Game, McMurtry’s first studio album in seven years, delivers what McMurtry listeners expect: fantastic wordplay, vivid depictions of country life that put contemporary spins on old country and rock troupes, laugh out loud lines (“I’m washing down my blood pressure pill with a red bull”), and that voice of restrained fury that makes every soft line feel like a strained neck muscle. But what’s different here is McMurtry’s focus on the one theme that informs his best songs: life slipping away.
On this album he relentlessly attacks you with the uncertainty of middle age, the idea that youth and life just sort of gave an Irish goodbye at some point, the fear that some unifying culture has dissolved with no replacement and the burden of unrelenting compromise that hangs over all of his characters. Where once McMurtry seemed to offer solutions in various forms: flight, anger (especially political anger), depression, violence, love, he now he seems to be saying that the fleeting feeling of helplessness we feel as our lives are constructed by someone else IS life. This affords him more opportunity to do what he does better than any song-writer on the planet: survey scenes of barely contemporary America and report back in beautiful couplets.
There’s equal measure solace and despair as it all slips away, and sometimes it’s hard to tell which is which. Nothing is easy, there are no shortcuts: even the most radio friendly song on the album, the finger-snapping, sweetly picked “She Loves Me” is about a man who is sure (or is he?) that his lover will leave the man he’s given her permission to sleep with when he does in fact return from an unspecified absence. (“He’s a parking lot attendant at a fancy restaurant/He rides his brother’s Harley, and he gives her what she wants/He knows his days are numbered, as far as she’s concerned/She’ll vote him off the island the minute I return/ Because she loves me”) Even pure love is a trade-off, a negotiation (“It was part of our agreement/I signed off on the deal/I must admit I never saw it happening for real/because she loves me”).
Lyrically, McMurtry has populated this album with about seven perfectly written songs (most of his albums give you two or three) and it’s hard not to think this is in some way related to the fact that he has unplugged the band and put away all the bells and whistles of the studio. The sound is stripped down, although to imply that McMurtry has simply made some sort of folk album would be incorrect. There’s plenty of rhythms, but there is no sign of the excess or that extra instrument too many that has resulted in a few missteps on the last couple of albums. Everything is tighter here, more live sounding, and it feels like McMurtry is more sure of himself, a little more self-aware about what he does well. And what he does very best are those long, meandering narratives that are tied to a specific time and place, that in spite of having a very clear, beginning middle, and end, just sort of end up back where they started.
“South Dakota” starts off with a soldier getting told his tour in the Middle East is up, flying into Stuttgart, then home. Nowhere here is there any political statement one way or another, it’s just a kid coming home – happily – to South Dakota after a job is completed. He meets up with his brothers (“we got way deep in our cups”) and the chorus is his brother asking him what he’s going to do next, while saying maybe he should think about going back. (“There ain’t much between the pole and South Dakota/ And barb wire won’t stop the wind/ you won’t get much here but drunk and older/ you might as well re-up again”). Nothing is resolved. “Long Island Sound” starts off with a pretty great country verse about the difference between southern states, before McMurtry breaks a temporary fourth wall and says that he “wrote that verse for the kids, but I never did sing it/ I filed it way and forgot it in time/ My old guitar sits in the back bedroom closet/ Next to the shotgun I got when I was nine” which is a pretty incredible description of how far ago things like singing cowboys seem, before he talks about having to deal with traffic on the Cross Island Parkway.
It only gets better from there, but it really is the heart of the album, the idea that things have slipped away and become domesticated (rarely does he journey as far East as NYC), but there’s no use being angry about it. The chorus is about drinking and having another round. It’s about enjoying life as it fades away.
But of course, McMurtry would never let us off easy and just end the album there. The album ends not on “Long Island Sound” but the next song, “Cutter.” It’s about somebody cutting himself in order to deal with, well, everything.
There are many ways to deal. I choose listening to James McMurtry.
Here are the lyrics to “Long Island Sound,” just because.
New Mexico’s lost on the back streets of Austin
Carolina keeps all her thoughts to herself
Tennessee’s tight, and he will not stop talking
Somebody shush him, before I have to myself
Wrote that verse for the kids
But I never did sing it
I filed it away and forgot it in time
My old guitar sits in the back bedroom closet
Next to the shotgun I got when I was nine
If I had any sense I’d be way across the Whitestone
I might as well sit here awhile for I start
Because when the 5:30 rush hits the cross island parkway
It’s not for the squeamish or the gentle of heart
I’d be stuck on the bridge in the right lane at sunset
Watching the boats with their snowy white sails
Watching the sun sinking over the projects
Laundry hung out off the balcony rails
And where are you now my long secret love?
Where have you gone in your glamorous life?
Where are you now as the moon comes arising?
Are you somebody’s love, are you somebody’s wife?
These are the best days, these are the best days
You all put your money away, I got the round
Here’s to all you strangers
The Mets and the Rangers
Long may we thrive on the Long Island Sound
I don’t know what goes on in those crumbling brick buildings
There on the same planet, in a whole ‘nother world
I got a bay boat and a 401k
Two cars in the driveway, two boys and a girl
It doesn’t seem that long since we came up from Tulsa
Been here six years and I reckon we’ll stay
The company’s not bad as far as companies go
I still got the health plan and they’re raising my pay
And the kids all play soccer like nobody’s business
My grandmother says we’re just letting them fall though
They don’t go to church, and we’re not gonna make ‘em
They all drop their R’s like the islanders do
These are the best days, these are the best days
You all put your money away, I got the round
Here’s to all you strangers
The Mets and the Rangers
Long may we thrive on the Long Island Sound
I remember her singing from that dusty old hymnal
Smelled like tobacco from granddaddy’s pipe
That old rugged cross ‘till she shook down the shingles
You never heard such a noise in your life
I had a tire run low so I dug through the glovebox
I needed the manual to locate the jack
Found a couple old picks and .20 gauge shot shell
Left from a duck hunt a couple years back
Oh. My. God. Brilliant.
These are the best days, these are the best days
You all put your money away, I got the round
Here’s to all you strangers
The Mets and the Rangers
Long may we thrive on the Long Island Sound
New Mexico’s lost on the back streets of Austin
Carolina keeps all her thoughts to herself
