Review Summary: The night has windows that cannot sleep..
Despite being recorded in London during the short gestation period between The Gun Club’s breakout trilogy and the ethereal
Mother Juno, Jeffrey Lee Pierce’s
Wildweed is coated in a fine, gritty cloud of Americana, starting from its Southern Gothic album art and then threaded through familiar themes of death parties, the abandoning God and frantic pleas for sex or love or both. Softer around the edges and more nuanced than either the piss and vinegar of
Fire of Love or the howl of
Miami, the music here sways effortlessly between angular Tom Verlaine-esque guitar interplay, sparkling 80’s pop and big-riff grassroots heartland rock; the sort of affair Tom Petty might have cooked up had he spent his formative years shooting up on Bleecker and prowling 52nd. The one-two-three punch that kicks off
Wildweed sees Pierce thrash away in the thick of that wild-eyed sophisticated swing the Gun Club had honed so finely, from the high-pitched asymmetrical slant of “Love and Desperation,” and then through two takes of the same earworm chord progression on “Sex Killer” and “Cleopatra Dreams On.” From there, the record eases into a mash of moribund balladry, frenetic pace shifts and funk-tinged slinky bass-lines. Closer “The Midnight Promise” is the LP’s finest moment, a beautifully fractured paean to loneliness in the wee hours, full of sharp guitar-work and desperate vocal acrobatics. Pierce’s poetry, delivery and range are all in blessedly grand form here,
Wildweed’s sessions arriving at a time of rare clarity and sobriety, his having just gotten clean for the recording of
The Las Vegas Story, and a few months away from him skulking back into addiction for the final time (Pierce would die a little over ten years after the album). Recent reissues of
Wildweed arrived with a slew of bonus tracks and live takes, as well as a string of spoken word poetry set to ghostly instrumentals that are the real lost treasures of this period in Pierce’s life and career, a revived interest in writing he would soon parlay into an achingly scorching memoir. The album remains one of the last fine statements from another doomed voice of the excess-laden 80’s, flailing but not forgotten quite yet.
