RCA Bluebird 82876-60645-2
Any description of Leo Kottke's music will be full of
paradoxes (quirky yet comfortable, deep but familiar)
and perhaps the biggest paradox of all is that it's
managed to stay fresh over nearly 30 years while
almost never changing. Each record puts subtle spins
on his brand of art: many or no additional musicians,
many or no vocals, many or few soft pieces. Each,
however, has offered fundamentally the same thing:
Kottke's deft six and 12-string playing, his baritone
voice and those stories which are as cryptic in print
as they are hilarious when he delivers them onstage.
The specs on Try and Stop Me are as follows: eleven
solo instrumentals, one vocal with band (a 1949
protest song with backup from Los Lobos, in their
junkyard Americana mode), nice liner portraits of
Kottke and a generous helping of his written
commentary. As for the music, it's a nice balance of
moods, starting with the folky double-shot of
"Monopoly" and "Stolen" and then branching into more
introspective territory with "Then," perhaps the
disc's standout piece.
The spin this time is that Kottke's brush with Phish's Mike
Gordon has left him with a greater willingness to
improvise. That seems to come through here with "Mora
Roa," about as close as one could imagine Kottke
getting to a Keith Jarrett-esque stream of
consciousness, and "Unbar," a similar outing in a
blues vein. The jazzier moods also appear in a
version of Carla Bley's "Jesus Maria" and the
originals "Axolotl" and "Gwerbegebiet," which, as the
titles might hint, take Kottke's folky picking in an
unusually stormy direction.
In the end, though, Try and Stop Me doesn't stop
Kottke from delivering his usual goods. Two decades
from now, there may be many changes in the label
systems that deliver music to audiences and the venues
where performers appear, but there's little doubt that
Kottke will still be on the circuit.
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