Mike West's 16 Easy Songs for Drill and Banjo, Binky Records, 1999

Mike West is an unusual character. An Australian by birth, he cut his musical teeth playing 80s alternative as frontman for The Man from Delmonte in the UK, then dropped out, moved to New Orleans and picked up a banjo. He's lived in, and drawn from, the city's Ninth Ward ever since.

So what kind of music might this be? The Mike West and Myshkin site (more on Myshkin in a minute) calls what West does "good time hillbilly music", and in fact it can be hard to get past the twang if one is attuned to the slick crap on FM radio. 16 Easy Songs begins with a West staple type, tripping through white working-class culture in "Yard Sale". It's a strange premise for a song, but it absolutely works, and works hilariously, especially if you've ever gotten up early on a Saturday morning and headed out with a twenty in your pocket to search for what Cheryl calls "treasure".

You got a toy alligator
And a doll with no hair
You got genuine chrome plated silverware
You got an exercise bike with no chain
You got a painting you never liked
But at least it's framed
You ain't got room to swing a cat
Where in the world
D'you find a thing like that
But at a yard sale

West is given to salting his records liberally with lighthearted songs like this, the effect being that one can be tempted to dismiss him as...well, sort of a hillbilly. That's an understandable mistake. In spite of the inclusion of such down-home instruments as the washboard and the spoons, Mike West writes some pointed lyrics which, although they don't always verge on poetry, can jerk a knot in your chain. From my not-all-inclusive exposure to his music, it seems that about half of West's output is in funny, almost childlike songs like "In My House", and that the rest comes in powerful songs like "Curtains", about two gay men moving into the rural mountains of North Carolina trying to find solitude.

You can lie around in the jacuzzi
All morning
Crash on the couch and watch TV
In the afternoon
But you have to hang curtains
On the windows in your bedroom

This is where Mike West, for my money, is at his best, in the counterpoint of a musical sound that registers in many modern ears as "backward" on one hand and a strong message on the other. West is a good musician, but his primary strength is in his lyrics, and this brings us back to the role of Myshkin in this record. West's wife and a wildly talented musician in her own right (they tour together and sit in on each other's songs), Myshkin adds an intense sound which has been called "torch punk" to the overall country-porch flavor and is able to stretch her legs most effectively on the "serious" songs. I'll readily admit my own bias toward serious songs, and so I like this record most where the intensity tempers the twang.

Overall, though, 16 Easy Songs is good enough that, after a few listen-throughs, even the most countrified songs were going through my head. I don't generally do countrified, so this is notable. I tend to think of Mike West and Myshkin as a kind of refuge from the aforementioned FM radio schlock - the song "Save Your Seeds" isn't talking about tomatoes, just as an example, and is just hillbilly as all get-out - and their joint record Econoline would be a good introduction for those in recovery from the Backstreet Boys' latest. Ordering information is available for it and all their recordings right here.