ALTERED STATESMAN

Nashville Scene
March 8, 2008

Sad Soul: Altered Statesman play white soul with a bohemian edge
by Edd Hurt

Steve Poulton’s songs play like prematurely abandoned picaresques of the urban, down-at-heel variety, and he sings his lyrics in a damaged croon that’s actually soulful. On Altered Statesman’s new self-titled full-length, Poulton and co-producer Joe McMahan have perfected a minimalist funk that falters and swings like it’s dead on its feet. But the head is alive. Altered Statesman is a puzzle, and one of the most sophisticated records a Nashville band has made in recent memory.

“It is soul music, but that’s the kind of thing you say when somebody asks you what kind of music it is,” Poulton says of Altered Statesman. He talks about soul like an aficionado, so a conversation with the songwriter comes complete with discursions on Chicago singers such as Major Lance and Otis Leavill. Poulton goes deep with the genre—he can quote the lyrics to George Clinton’s 1967 “All Your Goodies Are Gone,” which he says the group are doing in their live sets.

Poulton formed Altered Statesman in Dayton, Ohio, a decade ago. “You see [Guided by Voices singer] Bob Pollard every day, and you think, ‘Yeah, I can call my band whatever I want, call it whatever I want,’ ” he says. “In those days we never had a bass player. But I remember, one of the first shows we did outside Dayton was at the Hideaway, an old cop bar in Chicago. It was a benefit for the school band at [Chicago housing project] Cabrini-Green. Otis Clay came, and they showed all these great old films of Curtis [Mayfield] playing.”

On Altered Statesman Poulton sings like Mayfield, and like Smokey Robinson and Boz Scaggs. It’s white soul with a bohemian edge. Poulton plays vibes and a little piano, but pianist Tony Crow—whose work graced Lone Official’s 2006 Tuckassee Take—helps define nearly every song. If Poulton’s compositions suggest a steady diet of Chi-Lites albums, the production on “Evidence” recalls Arto Lindsay’s The Subtle Body, on which Ryuichi Sakamoto’s piano and Lindsay’s feel for atmosphere gave samba a catchy post-modernist twist.

Altered Statesman is allusive and sounds oddly familiar—nowhere more so than on “Bobby Rose,” for which Poulton contrives a classic ’50s chord progression and a set of lyrics about a doomed woman who is “dressed in last summer’s fashion.” Poulton sings it exquisitely, and blithe vibes color a tale that’s about a real person. Actually, the song isn’t funny.

“Last time I saw her, man, she was involved with some trumpet player named Curtis,” Poulton says of the song’s subject—a cousin of his. “She’d disappear for a few years at a time, and then you’d get a call—oh, she’s in the hospital with a broken arm. You can’t go back and take a photograph of it, so you write a song.”

Cut mostly at Nashville’s House of David, Altered combines the trailer-park skronk of Poulton and McMahan’s guitars with organ, synth and Paul Griffith’s weightless drumming. Richard McLaurin and Adam Bednarik engineered; every spooky section of dead space has its rightful place in the band’s aural universe. “The Ghost of Charlie Feathers” and “’92 Astro” lope along, while the beautiful “Viola Street” wanders down half-forgotten avenues in a slow, sad shuffle.

“The Ghost of Charlie Feathers” is about another person from Poulton’s past. “I’m from Salt Lake City originally, and it’s about one of the guys I knew growing up,” he says. “It was my mom’s sister’s husband—one of her many husbands—Big Eddie, as opposed to my cousin Little Eddie. He always had this slicked-back hair, like [rockabilly singer] Charlie Feathers, and Big Eddie really liked that rockabilly stuff. I don’t know exactly what he was into, but he was a pervert.”

Whatever the context, the song communicates loss, nostalgia and a bemused sense of tragedy. Throughout Altered Statesman Poulton displays the eye and ear of a true writer, and gets the details just right. “Charlie Feathers” mentions a “ ’61 Imperial with the top cut down,” and the opening lines of “ ’92 Astro” are perfectly timed even as the words themselves arise out of situations only Poulton could be expected to fully understand. “Whatever happened to that kid Che Zastro / Rode off in his ’92 Astro,” Poulton sings.

“C Cruise” casts the singer as a supplicant alone at a pay phone on a day unrelieved by love or drugs. “I’ve been calling since a quarter to five / Marking off the minutes on my arm with this knife,” he sings. The only thing he’s got left is this crummy memory, so he takes refuge in music: “The jukebox plays Huey Smith and the Clowns / Oo-wee, oo-wee baby.” It’s no sea cruise, and Altered Statesman is a work of art that sounds like it could turn out to be an uplifting experience for almost everyone involved.