This review comes from the August  2002 issue of the Illinois Entertainer.

I did the transcription here into the site so blame me for the typos.

This is the tonic to that "other" review a few posts down. Thats what inspired me to take my minimal typing skills and get this review on the board.

David Baerwald

Here Comes The New Folk Underground (Lost Highway)

Reviewed by Timothy Hiatt

From the Illinois Entertainer  A free music monthly

Every now and then, a little vacation is good for the soul. Take a break, clear the head, and then it’s back at it. Most vacations, however, don’t last nine years. Such is the case with David Baerwald. After crafting three superb albums: Boomtown , Bedtime Stories, and the terrifying Triage, Baerwald went away. He kept busy, however, working on such projects as Sheryl Crow’s Tuesday Night Music Club and writing music for films like Hurlyburly and Moulin Rouge.

So we’ll call it a working vacation.

Here Comes The New Folk Underground marks Baerwald’s first full-length album in nine years, and it’s as if he had never gone away; his insights just as cutting, and his song crafting just as sharp.

Where Triage was a howl of rage at the powers-that-be, Underground  finds a more personal, introspective, and optimistic Baerwald.  It’s optimism, however, that never lets you forget the darkness the lies just beneath the surface, such as when he says, “Love is eternal / as long as it lasts / good times come / then they pass / my brother staggers into me, eyes like bloody glass/ I give him change.” From “Nothing’s Gonna bring Me Down.”

He also retains his mastery of shifting styles while maintaining concise direction and focus. From the neo-funk  groove of “Bozo Weirdo Wacko Creep,” the Stax soul of “Love #29,” and the ragtime shuffle of “If (A Boy Whore In A Mans Jail),” Baerwald creates fractured landscapes of the human condition and fuses them together seamlessly.

As with his earlier work, Baerwald exposes the best and worst in society, and dances on its grave. The rave-up “Hellbound Train” reminds you that “rich man, poor man, we all end up the same,” but in “Me and My Girl” he lets us in on a little secret: as bad as things get, there’s still one thing you can count on – hope.

8 (out of 10)