Chainsmoking Blues

Slam Poetry

     

Like Tom Waits and Bob Dylan, C.R. Avery’s music is built upon poetic lyricism and performed with a gravelly vocal delivery although with a lot less years of oral torture. The Ontario born artist is known for his slam poetry, which he infuses into his songs along with his human beat-box, harmonica, guitar and piano. “East Van Business Plan” opens the album simply with three guitar chords that at first seem like a Seventie’s pop number. Once the catchy harmonica, beat-box hits the tune is put into drive and raps about leaving his home country, traveling on the road and hanging in San Francisco. The Be Good Tanyas provide the excellent background vocals to a few of the album’s tracks such as the “Door By The River” and “When I’m Gone” a sad and dreary piece featuring CR’s scruffy, torn voice backed by their beautiful vocals. “Commercial Drive” is the album’s most accessible number, although it lacks the poetic substance contained in the other songs it’s the one that is the most shout-out fun.

Through his lyrics, CR dispatches names and artists he admires such as The Suicide Kings, Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis. With "News Travel Fast” he refers to R.E.M., Leonard Cohen, KRS One and Dylan through the lyric “Napoleon in Rags”. CR also pays tribute to “Bill Hicks” the comedian who was not afraid to speak his voice by suggesting “What this world needs now is another Bill Hicks” since he passed away in 1994. Like Hicks, CR is not afraid about touchy subject matters in his lyrics letting loose challenging lyrics such as this verse from “Door By The River” "They say act like your Roman peers when in Rome, but ain’t that the trouble with hip-hoping gang-bangers these days, originality can single handily make that stop like a free clinic is doing abortions with clothes hangers"