Ben Everyman
Subourbon (Independent)

There’s plenty of wry humour on Subourbon, Ben Everyman’s third release, which gins up his experiment in country-based genre-bending, wherein yodelling rap is just another amusing fact of life. Cleanly produced by Winston Hauschild, the CD shows Vancouver’s quirkiest git-box-strumming singer-songwriter—who’s also a clever visual and spoken-word artist—at his confident best.

Some tunes recall Marty Robbins and Johnny Cash channelled through Captain Beefheart and Wall of Voodoo—most radically on the two-stepping honky-tonk opener, “2AM Drunk”, which also offers weird found sounds. Despite the back-porch vibe laid down elsewhere by great players like multi-guitar threat Scott Smith and bass-slapping Jeremy Holmes, the lyrics mostly offer a cockeyed tour of city folk (bourbonites?) and their problems. The present-day dire straits are self-explanatory on “Polyamorous Date Night” and “Washing Dishes at the Bank”. Things get more complicated in “No Nonsense Nellie”, which declares that the title character “can open letters, eavesdrop on your calls/she only wants a probable cause”.

Clocking in at just a leave-’em-wanting-more half-hour, the record doesn’t depend entirely on novelty; sometimes big Ben just sings pretty, as on “First World Suicide Note”, a Wilco-like ballad. And the lengthy closer, “Unquenchable Thirst”, gets downright emotional (sample line: “My glass is half full of emptiness”), setting a very high bar for the next time Everyman is ready to belly up.