Jonathan Richman - Because Her Beauty Is Raw and Wild
(Vapor, 2008)
9 out of 10

On "Monologue About Bermuda," from one of Jonathan Richman's 18 albums (Having a Party with Jonathan Richman , 1991), he tells a story to a live audience about his band from back in 1973, the proto-punk Modern Lovers, and the sea change he went through that caused him to leave the band and adopt a new attitude. In Bermuda, he saw a local group called the Bermuda Strollers, playing calypso, playing "Bang Bang Lulu," and really getting the crowd going. Meanwhile, the Modern Lovers were playing at that same Bermuda hotel, doing serious, chugging, motorik garage-rock songs like "She Cracked" and using "all kinds of Fender stuff" and "going, 'You know, this is pretty important...' Nothing snotty about [that], is there?"

There are a lot of aspects that make up the charm of Jonathan Richman, and as much as his personality is full of wonder and delight, one of those aspects is that he's still a little snotty. He's a bit of a punk, even; his age (now 57) and cultural stature, no matter how approachable he acts and appears, lend him a slightly imposing nature. He just finished up a four-night run at a club called the Make-Out Room in his current home, San Francisco, and every night he did an unreleased song that goes: "You can have a cell phone, that's okay — but not me." Each night featured variations, and one went: "You can have a cell phone, that's okay, if you wanna die." This rhymed with "but not I" on one night, and "I won't cry" on another. Nothing snotty about that song, right? Well, he's found his balance; on night one, he finished the song and spit, as best he could in his trademark childlike tone, "Yeah . I really told 'em."

I wouldn't have gone to every night of this week's S.F. run if it hadn't been for his newest record, Because Her Beauty Is Raw and Wild . I only knew Richman's earliest, snottiest, most classic work with the Modern Lovers, as well as his first two solo records, which are about as silly and poignant as American pop music can get. Nothing had compelled me quite strongly enough to follow through on the rest of his career until I found his latest album at Amoeba and, next thing I knew, it was in my shopping bag. I now couldn't be more glad for the impulse. Because Her Beauty Is Raw and Wild was a mainstay in my car for a week. No other CD went in for more than a single listen, but Raw and Wild went at least twice in a row every time, as if the album were structured to repeat exactly, so the material could sink in as it should.

The record is warm and vibrant, a flawless set performed in rock, ballad and Spanish rhythms, almost entirely just as the shows were: Jonathan on acoustic guitar and Tommy Larkins on the drums. It's a rare treat not to feel a little impatient when an artist with a massive back catalogue focuses on recent material. Aside from those two mid-'70s records, Richman has done his best work in the last two decades, and Raw and Wild is, alongside 1992's I, Jonathan , the best of it all. It features his best song about a painter ("No One Was Like Vermeer"), his best song about youthful love ("The Lovers Are Here and They're Full of Sweat"), and his second best song about parties ("Our Party Will Be on the Beach Tonight"). It's a reading of the thoughts of an artist, particularly one who always puts his thoughts out on display, balancing between middle age and "old" age while maintaining the playfulness that seems to come as naturally as air to him, even through aspects as simple as inflection.

He did play, over the four nights, roughly 40 different songs, several of which were unreleased, some of which might have been (or clearly were) improvised on the spot. He did pull out a few crowd favorites, only four of which dated from before I, Jonathan ; he took on his "stiffer" band's "Pablo Picasso," and he regaled us with "I Was Dancing at the Lesbian Bar" and some examples of that dancing while Tommy took one of his many solos. But as a performer, he makes it clear, despite some of his old-fashioned stubbornness, how he thrives in the present, how he stays full of that wondrous spark, never forgetting the grievances the world inspires but nonetheless loving the people, to make them laugh and thrive there with him, loving the same world.

He opened the first night with "Old World," once a Modern Lovers song and now appearing on Raw and Wild 35 years later as a Jonathan Richman song. In it, he sings, "I have respect for the old world, but I don't want to go back to the old ways... I say, 'Bye bye, old world.'" He closed the last one, just as he closes the new album, with a song called "As My Mother Lay Lying." As she "lay dying," he sang to a rapt crowd, "I learned some more."

It's Richman's emotional double-duty, this bittersweetness, the self-aware realness of every performative gesture as a reach towards contact and relatedness, that defines him, that makes him winning, as opposed to some obnoxious, affected dilletante. He sings songs in French, Spanish and Italian, and in the liners for Because Her Beauty Is Raw and Wild , he explains it's because he can't say it in English; yet still, on stage, he'd translate the words of some phrases after he sang them, since he can't help but try to get it across anyway. Some songs he would end with a sad, pensive look, and others with a wide-eyed smile. And both expressions seemed to say some version of the same thing, and even more astonishingly, on record, he achieves them both.

-Spencer Owen