Greg Garing-- Alone (Paladin / Revoltution 24676)

No, not Beck, Johnny Cash. . . or even Shania Twain. Rumor mill and Billboard articles say that it's Mr. Greg Garing of Nashville who is actually the PIONEER of the now-hot sub-genre of Trip-Hop-Country and. . .

(I'll pause here)

YOU MEAN GARING STARTED THE WHOLE TRIP-HOP COUNTRY THING?!!

(No. Not only did I not want to know there was a whole trip-hop country thing, I didn't even want to know. The mind reels. . . Randy Travis with a Moby remix? Portistatic's soundtrack-to-Batman V collaboration with Tracy Lawrence? KRUDER, DORFMEISTER & WILLIE??)

But, whoa there Nellie, it turns out that this feller Garing is some kind of weirdo genuwine article-- a dark and dowdy dude churning out minor-chorded tales of twang onto a flatbed truck of swirling keyboards, chomping and clomping beats. Quite neat.

Problem is It ain't Trip-Hop. It's too melodic. And it's not really country, either-- Garing's clear-voiced tenor breaks out of the mix like those the mellow L.A. '70's hodads "Say What You Mean" is J.D. Souther if Souther lived in a haunted trailer in Tennessee filled with Casios, and "Walk Away From Me" is like a Jackson Browne song given an unabashed dance treatment (except that Browne hasn't written a song this catchy in years). All hard R's and hedonistic tales, Garing comes off ultimately like T-Bone Burnett's punky younger brother a reclusive pothead who DIDN'T find Jesus and instead built a home studio and a sequencer in the back of a honky-tonk and, well, went to town.

A couple of the cuts do merge psychodrama balladry with spooky atmospherics like no one's business. The scary, totally beautiful "Dream Too Real to Hold" is the disc's centerpiece, and Garing's one honest claim to immortality the apocalyptic prose rising up out of a smokescreen of loping, atonal circus-like keyboards (the phrase "Rabbit running over your grave" definitely applies), like Tricky covering an Everly Brothers song. That cut, and the similarly austere "All My Stars Are In Your Eyes" are where this Nashville bad boy shines best-- and where the misplaced Hank Williams comparisons in the hype sheet actually make some sense.

Yet, Hank's one hell of a big hat to live up to, and this would probably never make the dancefloor grade at an Alabama rave. A line dance either. (Maybe your next party!)

--- Tab Hutchins