Hamell on Trial
Choochtown
Evangeline 2001

Hamell on Trial is one person, Ed Hamell, who’s basically an angry bald bloke with a guitar. Technically he’s a singer-songwriter, but you don’t get much less like Nick Drake than this. Choochtown is a set of connected songs, apparently about the clientele of a crackhead bar he used to work in in New Jersey. God knows what they think about this record.

It’s hard to find comparisons, because this is like nothing else. As a lowlife chronicler he’s got something in common with the Velvet Underground and the Ramones. The songs are like short stories. There’s even one about a private detective. It gets off to a fine start with a spoken piece called ‘Go Fuck Yourself’. The lyrics are excellent; you never get tired of hearing them. My favourite is ‘Judy’, where the protagonist talks about what he’s going to do ‘when Judy gets back from the rehab’. Judy is a feminist junkie conspiracy theorist, who tells him ‘Eve got raped’. It’s a kind of love song. He says she taught him everything he knows. Aah.

Musically I suppose it isn’t startling. There’s quite a bit of speedy guitar strumming, the songs are good tunes and it all sounds fairly satisfying. It’s the lyrics which are really brilliant. I completely recommend it.