ALBUM REVIEW: Long-Shelved Todd Snider Album Is Worth the Wait

Todd Snider was on a creative roll when he recorded a new album in 2007. It was called Crank It, We’re Doomed, and for some reason the mercurial singer-songwriter decided to shelve it, though several tracks would wind up on subsequent albums, some with different titles and altered arrangements.

Well, Crank It, We’re Doomed is here now in its original form, and it’s hard to see why it was held back. The 15-song set is quintessential Snider, whose self-styled image as a shiftless, dope-smoking hippie belies a wise, witty, and perceptive artist whose songs mine topical issues and eternal truths against a backdrop that ranges from folk and country to talking blues and rock. It’s no wonder that this ragged charmer’s fans have included John Prine, Billy Joe Shaver, Kris Kristofferson, Jerry Jeff Walker, and ex-mentor Jimmy Buffett (whose “West Nashville Ballroom Gown” is the one non-original here).

Of the tracks that had not resurfaced, “Juice” is a fuzzed-out garage-rocker, the kind of sound Snider would delve into more later as Elmo Buzz and the Eastside Bulldogs. “But Seriously Folks” is a country number showing the singer at his most open-hearted and vulnerable: “I’m unafraid to say what I’m afraid of.” And “What Made You Do It” finds him rapping over a jazzy bass and percussion arrangement, asking his friend and collaborator Shaver why he shot a man outside a Texas bar in 2007. (There’s also “Mercer’s Folly,” which was the basis for two different songs on 2012’s Agnostic Hymns and Stoner Fables.)

The rest of the album contains the original versions of some of Snider’s best and most striking work. “Handleman’s Revenge,” which appeared on Peace Queer as “Stuck on the Corner (Prelude to a Heart Attack),” is a breakneck rocker about a worker stuck in a suffocating, soulless job with the refrain: “Stuck on the corner of sanity and madness.” “Don’t Tempt Me” is a swinging country duet with Loretta Lynn, and “The War on Terror” — on Peace Queer as “Is This Thing On?” — is a funky, one-chord acoustic workout as Snider unfolds a brilliant strategy for turning the tables on a bully.

Todd Snider (photo by Stacie Huckeba)

“I gotta lotta love,” Snider confesses on “The Last Laugh,” here with a bluesier, harmonica- and organ-laced vibe as opposed to the country take he gave it on 2009’s The Excitement Plan, and the line could refer to the generosity of spirit that courses through the album.

That point is driven home when Snider concludes with the benediction of “Good Fortune.” It’s given a more basic acoustic arrangement than on the version on The Excitement Plan, and features harmony parts by guitarist Will Kimbrough and violinist Molly Thomas, who play throughout the album, and a verse sung by Kristofferson.

Maybe withholding Crank It, We’re Doomed “seemed like the right thing at the time,” to borrow a line from “Mercer’s Folly.” But it’s our good fortune that Snider changed his mind.

Todd Snider’s Crank It, We’re Doomed is out Nov. 10 via Aimless Records.