Stan Ridgway

Narrative: that's the story on ex-Wall of Voodoo honcho Stan Ridgway's debut solo LP, The
Big Heat. While many lyricists now think in visual terms in order to stoke video's
mile-a-minute image assault, Ridgway's sensibility is much more specifically cinematic. His
songs tell stories that unfold gradually and trade in old-fashioned narrative devices like
character and suspense. It's a move at once conservative and daring – but, best... More >

Greil Marcus argues that the former Wall of Voodoo frontman is "playing with" the American voice Raymond Chandler once described: "flat, toneless and tiresome." Pretty clever, only I don't hear much play. That voice is no creation--it's Ridgway, who shares with Chandler the literary sins of cynicism and literariness. Like a city reporter with a drinking problem or a novelist turned night clerk, Ridgway is a wise guy who isn't as wise as he thinks he is, and while a fair number of these songs have the sleaze-infatuated atmosphere L.A. artists from West to Waits have gone for, only a couple--"Walkin' Home Alone," a song of lost love any ass would be proud of, and "Pick It Up (And Put It in Your Pocket)," the dirt on Reagonomics--belong in the same paragraph as Raymond Chandler. (Grade: B)