Kinder cuts, page 2
So I can't help but feel a little guilty admitting that "Cut You" (Reprise), the pleasant, listenable new album from Penelope Houston, doesn't have the place in my affections that her teenage work with the San Francisco punk band Avengers does. Avengers numbers like "We Are the One," "Car Crash," and "Fuck You" (my fave) spring from the time in the late '70s when punk was starting to make itself felt in the U.S., but their "tomorrow, the world" anger and glee and determination still carry a jolt. And if their best number, "The Amerikan in Me," has that silly New Left spelling, it contains a line that can define the distance between the punks (and the fans and players who've followed in their spirit) and the '60s generation: "Ask not what you can do for your country/Ask what your country's been doin' to you."Houston has since opted for a gentle brand of folk-pop that tries to distinguish itself from the summer-breeze-and-lace-curtain weightlessness of the genre by shards of lyrics that catch you unaware. "Cut You" contains several of those moments. There's a sneering laugh in Houston's voice when she sings, "Get down on your hands/You make a real nice chair" (in "Ride"), and a mean, bracingly unhealthy come on: "Won't you stay and dig into my skin?/Won't you scratch your initials in, in the nicest way?" (in "Scratch").
At its best -- in numbers like "Fuzzy Throne," "Sweetheart," and "Qualities of Mercy" -- "Cut You" (which combines new songs with numbers from the albums Houston has released in Europe and from her last stateside release, 1992's indie "The Whole World") reminds you of the pleasures to be had from folk-pop when you're dealing with a singer-lyricist who doesn't sound as if she'd rather be drifting across a college green in a long cape reading Keats. But one of the reasons that the sharpest lyrics stick out is that too much of "Cut You" blends into an aural wash that just about defies you not to listen with one ear.
Except for the title track. Musically, "Cut You" is the gentlest-sounding number here, with Houston's soprano at its most soft and lilting and an autoharp being strummed lazily in the background. But the mood is one of full-blown psychosis trying to present a smiling face to the world.
"Now your time has come," Houston begins, and just as we settle into that voice, she continues, "I'm gonna cut you/like I should have done/a long time ago/Your smooth skin will part/so sweet and so tender/and my lips are never, never far." She's like Jenny Wright as the sweetly seductive teenage vampire in Kathryn Bigelow's "Near Dark" promising her naive beau a goodnight kiss before plunging her teeth in. (Houston even sings, "You're young and green/a little rotten at the core" at one point.) The song is a nightmare presented as a lullaby, punk having a sick-joke revenge on folk, and a suggestion of what Houston might be capable of. She's opened the wound. Now would somebody please pass her the salt?
