Rodney DeCroo – Mockingbird Bible (Northern Electric) Now here’s a guy who epitomises the word melancholy. His previous release, War Torn Man, though resolutely dark, was ‘lifted out of its pervading sense of despair by a sizzling band.’ The blurb says we can expect no such safety net on this set; ‘it’s a straight ahead depression record!’ The photograph of Rodney, on the front cover, depicts a bearded man dressed in a dark suit, not unlike a better-dressed Tom Pacheco. The acoustic based backing provides a sparse backdrop to his cheery tales of dispirited loneliness, “Mockingbird”, or ‘songs about dying in your bed’ on the ‘uplifting’ opener “Secret Ground”. A dash of mandolin introduces “Gasoline”, but we don’t have to wait long for a positive lyric, ‘LA burns like a junkie on fire’, croons a contented Rodney. DeCroo is supported by a sympathetic group of players who add to the general downbeat mood. Pride of place, though, has to go to the imaginatively titled “Loneliness Has The Soul Of A Spider,” ‘and oh, you’re gonna take it to your grave.’ This record proved to be a useful antidote to all those cheerful Christmas records one has to endure each year. At the very least Rodney’s sense of doom would have impressed the late Towns Van Zandt. Maybe Mr. DeCroo could replenish Leonard Cohen’s faded creativity? Well done, that man! www.myspace.com/wartornman John Brindle Next