A Constellation Rebirth: North Star Deserter

I honestly stopped keeping track of Vic Chesnutt's prolific recording output since the end of the 90s (around _The Salesman and Bernadette_ recorded with Lambchop), but when I discovered that his latest album "North Star Deserter":http://www.cstrecords.com/cst046.html would be out in September on "Constellation records":http://www.cstrecords.com/aboutcst_index.html (Canadian home of such fantastic bands as Godspeed You! Black Emperor, A Silver Mt. Zion), I thought I might give it a try.After all, "Carla Bozulich":http://www.carlabozulich.com/ (former singer of the _Geraldine Fibbers_) went through the Constellation treatment last year, and produced one of the very best album of 2006 ("Evangelista":http://www.carlabozulich.com/Evangelistasongclips.html).As always, Chesnutt is an arrestingly vivid songwriter, but whereas his last records were so polished and richly produced that his words were easy to overlook, the harshly rough-around-the-edges tone of North Star Deserter provides a match for his bleak narratives. In that respect, it’s the most urgent-sounding album he has made since the mid-‘90s.Here are some statements from the Constellation crew:_We have been massive Vic Chesnutt fans for many years. Prior to starting Constellation together in 1997, among the first records we bonded over was Is The Actor Happy, a slab of vinyl played so often (and so often late at night) that its grooves are well chewed.__The songs on North Star Deserter are some of the most bracing and intense we've ever heard from him: macabre and fearless, playful and funny, at times deeply personal and at others, incongruously hopeful. Stripped-down songs like "Warm", "Rustic City Fathers", "Over" and "Marathon" are juxtaposed with explosive rockers like "Everything I Say" and "Debriefing", while "Glossolalia" and "You Are Never Alone" feature wonderful arrangements and group singing.__The broad cast of players - all seven members of Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band, along with Guy Picciotto (Fugazi), Chad Jones & Nadia Moss (Frankie Sparo), Eric Craven & Genevieve Heistek (Hangedup), Bruce Cawdron (Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Esmerine) and T. Griffin (The Quavers) - offered influences and approaches to Vic's music that yielded a record unlike any other in his substantial discography.__Recorded over the winter of 2006-2007, at one of the last sessions to take place at the original Hotel2Tango location in Montreal (the studio moved in spring 2007), we believe North Star Deserter is the very best album Vic Chesnutt has yet made (while humbly acknowledging the boldness of such a statement)._"Glossolalia":http://www.ezarchive.com/show/qfsmayhem/02glossolalia.mp3"Everything I Say":http://www.ezarchive.com/show/qfsmayhem/03everythingisay.mp3