Stan Ridgway - Black Diamond (1996)

The former Wall of Voodoo singer spins strange and surreal tales that keep you up at night. This album challenges more than a few of the assumptions that have been made about Stan Ridgway as a songwriter. Stan himself calls it ''a song cycle for dreamers and schemers'' and went on to say, ''The songs took shape during the summer of '95, at a time when I was coming to grips with a lot of conflicting thoughts and feelings...And at the risk of sounding like some wounded folkie, this is probably the most personal record I've made so far.''
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Stan Ridgway is the music world's version of a character actor. With his barker's phrasing and sardonic demeanor, he's like the instantly identifiable second banana who brightens the screen for a few minutes before the leading man steps back to the fore. Of course, Ridgway has the same predicament as any good character actor: he's typecast. They remember that yapping voice from his early '80s Wall of Voodoo hits "Mexican Radio" and "Ring of Fire," and it's such a distinctive instrument that his identity has been frozen in time. Black Diamond is Ridgway's conscious effort to stretch out and break ties with his history. A low-budget affair, it finds the Southern California singer stripping down to spare guitar, keyboards, and percussion, in the process placing greater emphasis on his songs. Certainly "Luther Played Guitar" and "Wild Bill Donovan" don't fit with Ridgway's new wave past. The former finds the singer inhabiting the mind of Johnny Cash as he wistfully recalls his early sideman Luther Perkins. The latter is a one-part Warren Zevon tirade, one-part Bob Dylan folk ballad chronicling the exploits of one of America's seminal spies. Speaking of Dylan, Ridgway revives "As I Went Out One Morning" from John Wesley Harding, giving a refined reading to an intriguingly cryptic but seldom-covered song. "Gone the Distance" is yet another Kurt Cobain elegy. The kind of album that slips through the cracks, Black Diamond nevertheless indicates Ridgway's best work may yet lie ahead, even if he may be destined to be the rock & roll Warren Oates. --Steven Stolder