Throughout his 25-year career, eloquent balladeer Tim Grimm has remained true to the American storytelling tradition championed by the likes of Woody Guthrie and John Prine.
At this critical point in history, voices of sanity and reason like his shine like beacons of light in the bleak political landscape. This album, and one song in particular, reflects anguish and disbelief at the rise of right-wing ideology. +
There are no prizes for guessing who the “laughing fool” is in Broken Truth;a man with ”no shame and no soul” who is tearing the country apart. The word Trump is not uttered in this song but if you had any doubts about the target of Grimm’s venom, this is dispelled in Woody's Landlord Revisited where the POTUS is directly named and shamed.
In Grimm’s previous works he has tended to focus on his own life and give thanks for the opportunity to commune with nature while the world is slowly falling to pieces. In ‘Bones of Trees’, there is more of the same but also a distinctly more outward perspective.
With In The USA, he conveys the fears of a young child who makes the poignant plea “I don’t want a gun in my school”. In Gettin' Older Grimm laments that distractions of mobile phones blind us to what’s really happening in the world.
Although imagining targeting life’s “minor irritations” with a Bow and Arrow has a lighter feel, the urgency of the situation is not ignored.
Not all the tracks are in this vein. Hunting Shack is a Johnny Cash style tune inspired by the 50 acres of woods Grimm inherited from his father.
In Mists of Ennistymon the singer imagines the lives of his Irish ancestors and is joined by Paul McKenna on harmony and Dougie Pincockon on pipes.
The weakest tracks are the two cover songs. Susan Werner’s Barbed Wire Boys is a mawkish ode to the “full-grown men” of the rural mid-west and John McCutcheon’s Christmas in The Trenches carries a laudable anti-war message but this is buried in sentimentalism.
Fortunately, the bulk of this record is more streetwise and blends poetry with politics effectively to provide some welcome resistance to the MAGA madness.
