CST046 2x180gLP / CD
VIC CHESNUTT
North Star Deserter
REVIEWS
A truly extraordinary recording. Chesnutt is a songwriter of singular talents, embracing a homey but keenly intelligent expressionism in his songs that conveys a genuine, often touching humanity, but his collaborators on North Star Deserter have taken his music in a powerful new direction…they’ve truly brought out the best in one another; this is powerful, adventurous music that’s as challenging as it is beautiful, and ranks with Chesnutt’s finest work to date.
ALL MUSIC
Incredible album…which will no doubt become known as Vic Chesnutt’s finest collection of songs to date. North Star Deserter is a stunning record, at all times folk, blues and old time rock music but simultaneously daringly contemporary…Huge Recommendation.
BOOMKAT
One of the richest and most satisfying of his storied career.
POPMATTERS
A rebirth…the harshly rough-around-the-edges tone of North Star Deserter provides a match for his bleakly self-searching narratives…the most urgent-sounding album he has made since the mid-‘90s
ALARM
A masterpiece..Picciotto and the Constellation team create the perfect atmosphere for Chesnutt’s captivating words. The album is already being heralded as one of Chesnutt’s best and has drawn comparisons to Johnny Cash’s American series. Comparisons aside, this is arguably one of the best albums, projects and ideas of the year.
STYLUS
North Star Deserter creeps and clamors, and Chesnutt’s lucid visions of pills becoming religion and destruction generating newness are painted in brilliant instrumental imagery…his best album in years—possibly ever…
NASHVILLE SCENE
When wheelchair-bound Vic Chesnutt spikes his soul-crushing songs with a wicked grin, he somehow gives discomfort a powerful allure… this musician’s musician once again finds a coterie of like minds—Fugazi’s Guy Picciotto, members of Godspeed You! Black Emperor—to help turn chronic disquiet into disturbingly palpable dread-folk.
SPIN
His past few albums have traded bristling eccentricities for something closer to a cozy agreeableness…North Star Deserter sounds like a return to the dark woods after years in the city…[the band’s] versatility allows Chesnutt to sound spooked and spooky, Southern and gothic without resorting to “Southern gothic.”
PITCHFORK
His 11th album is a big surprise…filled with tender, witty, funny and heart wrenching moments of lyrical clarity. Chesnutt’s lyrics are by far and away some of the most impressive I have heard in a long time. The use of Thee Silver Mt. Zion as a backing group is both a surprising and excellent choice…They play sensitively and respectively within Chesnutt’s world, adding details that build on his words to make them shine even brighter than before. Hopefully this will be the start of a continued working relationship between Chesnutt and the Constellation crew.
BRAINWASHED
This may be his best work, and is one of those records that will almost certainly lead you back through his catalog to do some catching-up if you are unfamiliar with Chesnutt’s work; if you have followed him, this is just one more reason to keep following.
FOXY DIGITALIS
Unforgettable wordplay, worthy of some lost Tennessee Williams novella, is Chesnutt’s strength, and he continues his extraordinary winning streak on Deserter.
CREATIVE LOAFING
CONSTELLATION 1-SHEET
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.
Our friend, Brooklyn-based filmmaker Jem Cohen (Benjamin Smoke, Instrument, Chain), has known Vic for many years. When Jem proposed that Vic make his next album at the Hotel2Tango studio in Montreal, with various Constellation musicians (along with a couple of American friends) as players for the session, we were thrilled. When we heard the results, we were floored. When offered the opportunity to release the record, we were honoured.
Vic Chesnutt is one of the finest songsmiths we know. His words knock us out, his voice is like no other, and the two combined can deliver lyrical phrases that echo in your brain for weeks, months, years…that you find yourself adding to your quotidian vocabulary of sardonic asides, devastating metaphors, witty rhymes. Words that are never clever for their own sake, but smart and substantive as all get out.
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). The sessions were orchestrated by Jem, who also oversaw production (along with Efrim and Thierry of Silver Mt. Zion, and Guy from Fugazi). The album was recorded by Howard Bilerman. The record is available on CD and double 180g LP, with artwork by Michael Ackerman and Jem Cohen.