Among the dynamic marketing hooks surrounding the engaging whirlwind of quirky, alternately sensitive and soulful and edgy, off kilter rockin’ fun of Jason Montero’s Inside Out is the fact that this is the first album brilliant singer/songwriter and accomplished veteran troubadour’s first album in over two decades. And whatever magic and fire he was dropping before then sadly hasn’t been digitized to stream in the modern era.
While it’s lovely and perfectly fitting that Montero has a resume of thousands of gigs across the country and a sea of loyal fans from all walks of life, just a bit of immersion into three elements should make those of us who can’t get enough brilliant indie rock to mourn these lost years of creative possibility. First, his inviting, deeply seductive lower register vocal tones. Next, the crisp, edgy, almost surreal interplay between his acoustic and distorted electric guitars with Dave Jacobson’s electric and Paul Rugo moody, ever-throbbing basslines.
Overriding those salient sonics are Montero’s absolutely crazy and mind boggling yet perfect lyrics, which tell their off the wall, delightfully challenging to decipher narratives in a blaze of crafty wordplay and a constant stream of fanciful off the wall rhymes. The festivities start with “Conclusive Illusions,” an easy rolling mid-tempo pop/rock ballad that shines like a word game at a party, literally forged from a stack of flash cards from an SAT prep kit: “The illusions that you allude to me include the problems evading our mentality so conclusive are the answers obscuring me/Can’t you hit the side of a barn?”
Read that and you’re bound to go, yep, brilliant, but huh? Yet Montero’s delivery is so fluid and intoxicating, we’re excited to go along for the ride and fill our hearts and souls with the wild 25 minutes to follow. Like the lead single “Thorn,” an eerie, exotic and percussive acoustic number (ostensibly about a messy but enduring relationship) that rhymes “pre peeled lemon drops” with “heavy rains have spoiled my crops,” in addition to references to cannabis, Bellevue, Baryshnikov, Shakespeare, Elvis and lingering sobriety. “No James Dean” is a dark, gritty, drum-intense romp that name checks Don the Juan, Peter Paul or John, Casanova, Genghis Khan, Louis Farrakhan (rhyming those last two) and Beethoven.
Along the way, we get a mystical meditation over a lost lover leaving for “Gomorrah,” a trippy character study (a la The Kinks’ “Lola”) about a transvestite librarian (“Rebecca”) and the witty and whimsical rhyme o rama “Her Majesty’s List” which is as delightfully nonsensical as it is charming. Welcome back, Mr. Montero. Let Inside Out be the start of a recording Renaissance!
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