Hightone Records
2006
Love And Fear
About This Album
Tom Russell has been slugging it out on the unpaved singer/songwriter road to oblivion for decades. He's been through crooked promoters, bad label deals, playing in dives, and crummy travel accommodations. Russell likes to be paid, and paid well, but he's down in the dregs of the music biz using it for another purpose: all this time he's been chasing a dark, shimmering muse down highways and swampy backroads, across oceans and continents; he's in it to touch and wrestle with song itself. Love and Fear is the record that comes after Hotwalker, the enigmatic, beautifully flawed, ambitious jewel in his large catalog. Russell goes even deeper into the subterranean on Love and Fear, singing "I scratch the surface at my own peril," on the spooky, atmospheric "Beautiful Trouble"; those words are the very mantra for this set. The tune becomes musique noir with its hand percussion, skeletal reverbed guitar, and Russell's slowly whispering growl that's simultaneously an exhortation to revel in the fruits of the night and a an unapologetic confession. His desire for the edges of marginal experience is found in the shadows. The song is the signature and silhouette of those encounters, a postcard from the dark side, where real people actually do live.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 and 8)

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