Like a Texas version of Holden Caulfield hanging out at The Last Picture Show, Darden Smith has always been a dependably weary, yet persistent, chronicler of regret, melancholy and the knowing inevitability of the next day’s burdens.
This sublimely gifted, if luckless, Austin native has released just six discs since debuting in 1986 on Watermelon with the uneven Native Soil, but when he has stepped up to the plate since then, he’s generally been locked in like white on rice.
Quickly signed to Sony’s then-clueless country group, Smith saw this eponymous 1988 recording make two minor dents on the charts with “Little Maggie” and “Day After Tomorrow” on Epic, only to be shuffled to Columbia for a disorganized follow-up, Trouble No More.
Smith’s third effort for the mega-label found him on yet another in-house imprint (appropriately named Chaos/Columbia); 1993′s elegant, soaring Little Victories reunited him with British singer-songwriter Boo Hewerdine, with whom Smith had made the transcendent duo record Evidence in 1989. In 1996, Smith re-emerged with Deep Fantastic Blue for the since-defunct Plump Records, which remains his most recent release of new material (last year’s Extra Extra on Valley featured remakes of some of his best songs).
All of that said, this Lucky Dog/Sony reissue of his long-out-of-print major-label debut is welcome indeed. Produced by Asleep At The Wheel’s Ray Benson and bolstered by a unique cast of world-class musicians including guitarist Sonny Landreth, bayou wizards Cleveland and C.J. Chenier, drummer Paul Pearcy, mandolin/fiddler Larry Franklin and backing singers Lyle Lovett and Nanci Griffith, it still sounds surprisingly up-to-date over 12 years after the fact.
Smith’s dry ‘n’ dusty — yet warm and tender — pipes carry the day. The singer’s guileless approach to vintage country, Texas blues shuffles and giddy-up rock ‘n’ rollers is almost shockingly unadulterated; its sheer honesty and directness underscores (in retrospect) the artist’s inevitable fate.
