Rotation

Comments (0) By Anthony Mariani and Abram Shalom Himelstein Thursday, Jun 10 1999

More than the guitar playing, though, it's Erickson's voice that delivers these songs. The way he turns and returns to a phrase, all of it sung plaintively, with just a little wail and warble, is what's most noticeable on first listen. And his songs almost always have a chorus or a line that gets repeated again and again, often to chilling effect. By the end of a song, such as the four-and-half-minute "Stand for the Fire Demon" (during which Erickson sings the line "Stand for the fire demon" no fewer than 30 times), there is no way for the listener not to see the effects of three years in a mental institution.

When I realized it was a 15-year-old live album, I was suspicious about the quality, fearing it was something the record company scraped together to make money off the legend. And though it is a live album, the audience is relatively subdued, politely clapping at the end of each song, and the songs of the two eras next to each other make for an intriguing dichotomy. Lyrics as obscure as those to "Two Headed Dog" ("Two-headed dog / I'd be working in the Kremlin with a two-headed dog / Children nailed to the cross") are on the same record as the direct "Hungry for Your Love" ("Hungry for your love / I can't sleep at night / I just can't abide / Because I'm hungry for your love").

If Roky Erickson was broken, or made crazy or "forever changed" by his three years at Rusk, albums such as Demon Angel make me thankful he's still around. His new release is the haunting reflection of not only a genius songwriter but a once-sane person.

-- Abram Shalom Himelstein