Warren Zevon - Genius: Best of Warren Zevon
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Music CD Cover Artist: Warren Zevon Edition: Music CD CD Release Date: 2002-10-15 Music Label: Elektra / Wea Soundtracks:
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Free Music Notes for Genius: Best of Warren Zevon Album
Free Music Review: Bless Warren Zevon and the good people at Rhino!
Hit: 5 Stars
Being generally unfamiliar with the work of Warren Zevon -- outside of his classic late-'70s singles "Werewolves of London" and "Lawyers, Guns and Money," and Linda Ronstadt's fine covers of "Hasten Down the Wind," "Carmelita," and "Poor Poor Pitful Me" -- I was surprised to find that these aren't even the best songs on Genius, a 22-track best-of co-produced by Zevon himself and released by Rhino. Zevon is a criminally underrated singer-songwriter, and since he was recently diagnosed with terminal cancer, this retrospective makes for a well-timed and appropriate farewell. (I must also mention the all-too-brief liner notes, which are not so much biography or even career overview, but the measure of an artist's great personal impact on a pair of fans. Droll and affectionate, but never maudlin, you couldn't ask for a more fitting tribute.)The whole thing is jam-packed with terrific songs, alternately rousing and beautiful, funny and heartbreaking. "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner" is a haunting tale of murder and revenge, while "Excitable Boy" is a comical tale of murder that takes aim at society's "boys will be boys" mentality. The celebrity-rehab ode "Detox Mansion" straddles a thin line between cheekiness ("I've been raking leaves with Liza / Me and Liz clean up the yard") and confession ("Well, it's tough to be somebody, and it's hard not to fall apart"). In "Splendid Isolation," he longs for solitude (looking to Georgia O'Keefe and Michael Jackson as role models), while in "Reconsider Me" and "Searching for a Heart," he yearns for a human connection. "I Was in the House When the House Burned Down" is the lament of a hapless loser (a sequel of sorts to "Lawyers, Guns and Money," maybe?), while "Mr. Bad Example" -- possibly my favorite track -- is a wickedly funny story-song about the self-indulgence and "dirty deals" of an unrepentant, irredeemable scoundrel ("I'm Mr. Bad Example, take a look at me / I'll live to be a hundred and go down in infamy!").
Musically, Zevon can rock the house as much as anybody (escpecially on "Detox Mansion," a cover of Prince's "Raspberry Beret," and an ode to the boxer "Boom Boom" Mancini -- all three of which he performs with Peter Buck, Mike Mills, and Bill Berry of R.E.M.), but he can also startle you with gorgeous ballads like "The French Inhaler," "Hasten Down the Wind," and "Mutineer." The vitality of his latest work is summed up in just two tracks, 2000's jangly "I Was in the House..." and 2002's moody "Genius" ("Albert Einstein was a ladies' man / While he was working on his universal plan / He was making out like Charlie Sheen"), but I don't think that Zevon or the generally reliable folks at Rhino could have done a better job of picking out the cream of the crop. Smartly written and catchy as hell, the songs on Genius rank with the best of Randy Newman, who, like Zevon, is also blessed with a strong sense of both melody and humor. (Speaking of which, Rhino's 2001 compilation The Best Of Randy Newman makes for a swell companion disc to this one, but that's another review.)