Tim Foljahn :: Fucking Love Songs

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Read the title of Tim Foljahn’s latest LP, Fucking Love Songs, however you want: as a sarcastic sneer, a wounded sentiment, or somewhere in between. Foljahn’s enjoyed a storied career as a sideman, playing guitar with Townes Van Zandt, Cat Power, Brokeback, Thurston Moore, Half Japanese and more, and appearing on Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black as a member of the bar rocking band Sideboob. But he’s written songs along the way, too, leading the country-tinged Two Dollar Guitar with Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelley through the mid-‘90s and into the aughts before striking out under his own name with 2012’s Songs For An Age of Extinction.

His resume makes for good reference points, along with touchstones like Lee Hazlewood, Leonard Cohen, and Nick Cave, but Foljahn’s sly and busted poetry is distinctive on its own, as are his reverb-drenched melodies. Joined by a cast of fellow session all-stars including guitarist Tom Waits guitarist Smokey Hormel, Fucking Love Songs makes for exceptional listening. Whether Foljahn is taking on Stones-leaning gospel, sock hop shuffles, swinging blues or mellow folk, he sounds like he’s singing from the wrong side of midnight, broken up but managing a wry grin. “My lover, you remember, all those nights when we laid together,” he sings on “River,” before musically and lyrically quoting Kern and Hammerstein’s “Ol’ Man River,” an ornery inversion of that song’s heavy history which serves to almost celebrate his misery. “I just can’t behave,” he sings on “Beloved,” and thankfully, Foljahn’s songs are all the better for his lack of manners. words / j woodbury

Tim Foljahn :: Wild Tonight