Gerdes's lyrics have the same personal quality of Dylan's and Smither's, but they are not as subtle nor as consistently poetical. They are all good, but one gets the feeling he could have frequently said as much with considerably less strain. "Peas Porridge Hot" and "Real as Rain" are mellow, light songs in which Gerdes relaxes, sings smoothly, and plays his guitar well. "Time Will Let You In" and "Gardenia Lady" are also fine songs, which express with moving melancholy the dilemma of people caught in time.
The most original of the three albums is Loudon Wainwright's Album II. His experiments in almost shrieking emotional honesty do not always succeed completely, but the openness, eloquence, and powerful directness of his desperate loneliness make James Taylor's moanings seem sadly trivial. Several times, Wainwright's attempts to reduce emotions to the briefest, most forceful, and most blatant lyrical statements sound dangerously close to the slogans on insipid posters in the Coop. When his attempts bear fruit, they are absolutely searing, as in "Me and My
Friend the Cat," an angry lonely song, whose half-pleading, half-sung chorus strikes the album's theme:
If only you'd been there
You'd know what I mean--
If only you'd been there
If only you'd seen.
THERE IS so much that Wainwright seems personally struggling against--the familiar hypocrisy of society and what it does to individuals ("Be Careful, There's a Baby in the House"), his religion ("Nice Jewish Girls"), his ambitions ("Saw Your Name in the Paper"), the emptiness of renewed past acquaintances ("Old Friend"), and, of course, ultimately himself (a trilogy on suicide). His concerts are not novel, but the controlled rage with which he sings his songs is. His bitterness about human inconsequence shows up in "Suicide Song":
When you get hung up
Hang yourself up by the neck.
What the hell, what the hell, what the heck.
In those songs in which he shows off his sense of black humor, the comic is always mixed with a deep-seated sense of disgust. "Motel Blues," whose lyrics are almost more tears than words, is his best example of stark dissatisfaction and yearning, in this case, for a lover.
On top of his compositional skill. Wainwright is an infectiously good guitarist and he uses extremely little back-up music. This reinforces the album's overwhelming sense of aloneness and, because Wainwright is so good, he carries the show successfully.
Wainwright is not likely to have the broader success one might expect of Peter Yarrow or Chris Smither, simply because his style is so uncompromisingly personal. People like George Gerdes, however, are already showing Wainwright's influence. Wainwright's will be an exciting, original contribution to folk and blues, which must always be rejuvenated by forceful, gifted artists