Graham Parker

Another installment in Parker’s 30-odd year career. The thinking-man’s aging angry young man—sounding more like Dylan all the time—is as smartass as ever, still seething about a variety of things: He did discover America, early in his career, smoke up to his eyeballs, poison burning his throat; GWB’s attempts to deal with Katrina being the fault of sticking to a ridiculous plan; the cultural importance of England’s latest clown is yet to be determined. Elsewhere, every raindrop is a ton of lead, our systems run on blood and work by chance, and we don’t get to choose between love or delusion. These literate diatribes, accompanied by a somewhat mellowed version of his earlier pub rock, are slices of living wryly observed and rendered, urgently noting that things are going to hell in a handbasket.