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Richard Julian
Sunday Morning in Saturday's Shoes
(Manhattan)
First Appeared in The Music Box, April 2008, Volume 15, #4
Written by John Metzger
Wed April 9, 2008, 06:30 PM CDT
There’s no doubt that Richard Julian’s participation in The Little Willies
went a long way toward elevating his profile. After all, any outfit that also
features Norah Jones certainly would. Nevertheless, Julian remains better known
as a songwriter than a recording artist. He is neither flashy nor showy, and
like Bruce Cockburn, there’s an understated, candid quality to his delivery that
makes it relatively easy for his material to go unnoticed. For his latest effort
Sunday Morning in Saturday’s Shoes, Julian tapped attention-grabbing
producer Mitchell Froom for assistance, but the resulting endeavor doesn’t
really alter this well-ingrained perception of Julian’s output. Like his
previous albums, Sunday Morning in Saturday’s Shoes takes awhile to
resonate, but this time, his poetic charm slowly unites the material to push it
over the top.
Even with Froom’s presence, the music on Sunday Morning in Saturday’s
Shoes is fairly run-of-the-mill. Opening cut World Keeps On hints
faintly at Elvis Costello, and allusions to Paul Simon’s early solo work drift
through tracks like Brooklyn in the Morning and A Thousand Days.
Elsewhere, Froom and Julian more overtly sculpt Spring Is Just around the
Corner into a Lyle Lovett-inspired blend of jazz, country, and blues, while
Can’t Go Back uses its bass line to carry Mississippi John Hurt further down
the river to New Orleans. To the arrangements, Froom adds enough ambience — such
as the swirling carnival lights, which emerge from within A Thousand Days
— to keep things interesting, but not so much that he overpowers Julian’s
fragile melodies. Consequently, Sunday Morning in Saturday’s Shoes
initially appears to be innocuously pleasant, but with time, it reveals itself
to be something more.
The funny thing about how Froom chose to frame Julian’s words is that, as
Sunday Morning in Saturday’s Shoes plays, certain key lines become
highlighted. Julian cleverly tucked subtle observations about America’s current
social and political climate into the nooks and crannies of the tales that he
tells. In particular, he highlights how disconnected the country’s citizens are
from the global community. Near the conclusion of World Keeps On, for
example, a couple watches the war as it unfolds on television, but they worry
more about having left their suntan lotion at home. Elsewhere, Julian is more
direct, taking aim at the exportation of consumerism on Syndicated. In
between, he tells tales about a man who digs his own grave and dies in isolation
with the riches that he found (Man in the Hole), while the title track is
about coming face-to-face with the realization that Saturday’s sins have left
their mark.
As Sunday Morning in Saturday’s Shoes progresses, the phrases and
ideas that Julian introduces bubble to the surface, where they then begin to
twist and turn around each other. In the process, his songs become intertwined,
and the result is that the entire album is elevated by its overriding thematic
flow. Sunday Morning in Saturday’s Shoes isn’t necessarily meant to be an
election-year wake-up call. It’s far too subtle for that to be true. It is,
however, a rather moving observation about American apathy and narcissistic
materialism, though it also raises more questions than it answers.  ½
Sunday Morning in Saturday's Shoes is available from Amazon.com.
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Ratings
1 Star: Pitiful
2 Stars: Listenable
3 Stars: Respectable
4 Stars: Excellent
5 Stars: Can't Live Without It!!
Copyright © 2008 The Music Box
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