Click Here for Sound Samples!Double LP! Beautiful Black-On-Black Jackets!
Limited Edition! Includes 4 Bonus Vinyl-Only Tracks!!
Best known for the new wave staple, "Mexican Radio," Stan Ridgway was the original vocalist for pioneering electro-punks, Wall Of Voodoo. Since WOV, Ridgway has produced several solo albums that have charted in the UK and Europe. Most notable is a collaboration with The Police's Stuart Copeland called "Don't Box Me In" that was featured on the soundtrack to Francis Ford Coppola's Rumble Fish starring Mickey Rourke, Matt Dillon and Dennis Hopper.
Black Diamond, is a little different from anything Stan's ever written. It's a leaner, more intimate record, kind of old fashioned really. It's a song cycle for dreamers and schemers. The songs took shape during the summer of '95, at a time when he was coming to grips with a lot of conflicting thoughts and feelings: insecurity, loneliness, the need to control, bitterness, success, failure and, of course, the Big Three: anger, love and loss. Stan Ridgway's fourth solo album challenges more than a few of the assumptions that have been made about him as a songwriter.
"This is a record where I deliberately forced the songs to stand on their own," Ridgway says of Black Diamond's spare and spacious production. "The music is as simple and unadorned as we could make it. The musicians and I tried to let the songs flow out of our heads and onto the tape without a lot of fussiness and second-guessing in between. My true interest has always been in the surreal, the dream-states we encounter when we're asleep or wide awake with caffeine buzzing in our heads. And in fact," Ridgway says, "I wrote most of this music from dreams I'd had. I've really moved myself into fresh territory with these songs, I think."
Indeed, Black Diamond's songs explore music and moods that are both subtler and more far-ranging than anything Ridgway had previously attempted. An example of the singer's fascination with the dream state, "Stranded" melodically melts from one level of reality to the next, encompassing a ghostly, fractured Titanic slipping beneath the waves, an anxious lone hitchhiker and an object in decaying orbit destined for a fiery oblivion. By contrast, the warmly haunting "Luther Played Guitar" finds Ridgway stepping into the shoes of one of his heroes, Johnny Cash, to lament the passing of Luther Perkins, lead guitarist for the great balladeer's original band, The Tennessee Three.
"Although Ridgway's voice and unique storytelling lyrics put his stamp on whatever he attempts, the acoustic guitars and relatively straightforward approach on Black Diamond make it a distinct departure from everything he has done before." - Greg Adams, allmusic.com
Features:
Double LP
Limited Edition
Beautiful Black-On-Black Jackets
First Time Ever On Vinyl
4 Bonus Vinyl-Only Tracks
| LP1 | |
 | 1. Big Dumb Town |
| | 2. Gone The Distance |
| | 3. Knife And Fork |
| | 4. Down The Coast Hwy |
| | 5. Luther Played Guitar |
| | 6. Stranded |
| | 7. Wild Bill Donovan |
| | 8. Man Of Stone |
| LP2 | |
| | 1. Pink Parakeet |
| | 2. Underneath The Big Green Tree |
| | 3. As I Went Out One Morning |
| | 4. Crystal Palace |
| 5. Hear That Bird | |
| 6. Here For The Long Run (Bonus) | |
| 7. The Need (Bonus) | |
| 8. Squintin' At The Sun (Bonus) | |
| 9. Birdcage Records (Live) (Bonus) | |
| 10. Crystal Palace In The Sky (Live) (Bonus) |
