Album Review: Todd Snider – The Excitement Plan
Posted on | August 21, 2009 | No Comments
1. Finally, Todd Snider has some structure in his life, courtesy of super-producer Don Was. I was shocked to learn that Snider’s 2007 release Peace, Love and Anarchy was an odds and ends compilation, because I could have sworn that they were ALL odds and ends compilations, until this one. Was got Snider in a room with pedal steel ace Greg Leisz and legendary drummer Jim Keltner, and out came this beauty. Dry, spare, and somehow simultaneously full, The Excitement Plan gives Todd some much needed musical structure, even if his personal life is still in shambles.
2. A feeling of optimism in the face of misfortune pervades almost every song on The Excitement Plan — right off the top, Snider finds himself a four leaf clover that is missing a leaf, and surmises that a “slim chance is still a chance”.”Greencastle Blues” is a great musing on his arrest for possession at age 40, with his almost naive jailhouse lament: “How do you know when it’s too late to learn?”
3. A storyteller who slowly reveals himself to be the protagonist, Snider makes his way through several songs in the third person, including Robert Earl Keen’s “Corpus Christi Bay“, here given a breezy solo treatment that sounds a whole lot more like the bayfront city than Keen’s version. The story of two brothers who couldn’t get it right even if they got a second chance is a great fit for this record. The much lauded “America’s Favorite Pastime”, a fantastic re-telling of Dock Ellis’ acid-fueled no-hitter, speaks Todd’s thesis quite plainly: Don’t always expect failure from a ragamuffin approach to life. Even still, I bet he doesn’t get many babysitting jobs.
4. The singer/songwriter William Shakespeare said it best with “to thine own self be true”, and there is no mistaking that Todd Snider is who he says he is. His sense of self-awareness is second to none in a field of songwriters who attempt to define themselves through their songs. A barroom romp with Loretta Lynn in “Don’t Tempt Me” exposes his penchant for straying from the righteous path, and “Money, Compliments, and Publicity” is a sly commentary on pop culture (with an admission that he, too, is interested in those things). After notoriously aping Tom Petty for most of 1998’s Viva Satellite, Snider’s self-satisfaction is refreshing, and with Don Was’ production constraints, he really lets himself shine.
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