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Waxed - Record Review from Issue #67 Jan-Feb 2007

Dan Montgomery

Rosetta, Please (a Love Story) (Makeshift)

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New Jersey-raised, Memphis-based journeyman Dan Montgomery knows that the best stories are told in the most dive-like bars. This one’s the tale of an ex-con who falls for a prostitute, a love-hate relationship that’s heavy on the former with intermittent showers of the latter. Montgomery’s depiction, presented across this album’s nine well-crafted roots-rock songs, is so unflinchingly detailed that at the record’s end, your clothes carry the smell of cigarette smoke and desperation. “Baby, baby, when you coming home?/Baby, baby, are you coming home?” Montgomery’s protagonist asks in a voice that damn well knows the answer. This is the same guy who, bitterness somehow coexisting with affection, later offers, “She’s not exactly the girl next door/Unless you live next to the local whore.” Montgomery’s most brilliant stroke is also giving Rosetta a voice, on a pair of songs that recall Alejandro Escovedo at his most brooding, down to the interplay between cello and violin. “Long Long Night” is especially effective: “I work for the money/The money’s for the drugs/The drugs for the pain” is one of the most succinct definitions of vicious cycle ever put to record. This is the kind of astonishingly good album that will inspire you to bend the ear of the person the next stool over.

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Originally Featured in Issue #67 Jan-Feb 2007

Cover of Issue #67 Jan-Feb 2007

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