On a comeback of sorts, Paleface heads into Athens
By Jim Phillips
Athens NEWS Senior Writer
May 1, 2008
Punk-folk survivor Paleface is on his way back from the abyss and obscurity, and he’s heading to Athens tonight. With drummer Mo Samalot, he’ll play the Casa Cantina at 10:30 p.m.
Based on the retrospective featured on his Web site, Paleface’s career would appear to feature equal measures of wild talent, possibly dubious legend and crazy bad luck.
He seems to have had numerous shots at being a contender, messed up by either bad decisions, music-industry nonsense or bizarre wrinkles of fate.
Supposedly, he was taught to write songs by Daniel Johnston – figure that one out – and started making home tapes back in 1989. He then roomed with Beck in New York, and purportedly “inspired” his roommate’s early work.
In 1991, Paleface signed to Polydor and recorded his first album, “Burn and Rob.” This was a record ahead of its time, featuring straight-ahead folkie tunes with hard-hitting lyrics, powered by raw power-chording guitars. If memory serves, it bore some kind of weird archetypal resemblance to Bob Dylan’s first clumsy stabs at playing rock music.
After some ill-advised sharing of tour dates with the Judybats and Crash Test Dummies, he toured with Billy Bragg, and got some excited attention in Rolling Stone and Spin.
He worked on his sophomore record in 1993, but supposedly got dropped because the record company didn’t “understand the tunes.” He made a record with Kramer’s Shimmy Disc label, but – this development is labeled “Fact, Myth, or Legend?” – Kramer accidentally erased all the masters, wiping out the recording.
Paleface signed to Sire in 1995, then put out his record “Get Off” about the same time as his old roommate Beck released his big hit album “Odelay.” “Sire doesn’t want to compete with the marketing, and one month later Paleface is dropped,” the Web site claims.
He toured with the Breeders and Lutefisk in 1997, indulged in too much substance abuse, and ended up almost dying of liver problems. He cleaned up, started writing more songs and recording lo-fi underground bootlegs.
There’s more, but the upshot is that he’s back and allegedly better than ever.
His latest record, “A Different Story,” is simple and straightforward without feeling too stripped-down.
The Salisbury Post praised its “refreshing simplicity and economy of instrumentation and effects, never getting in the way of the poetry of the lyrics.”
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