Kenneth Pattengale

Storied Places

(Milan)

Record Review by Alex Pudlin

It ain’t easy being a troubadour these days. Come with soft songs about the simple things in life and you’re labeled a neo-Gordon Lightfoot, or worse, a Jack Johnson-clone. Too outrageous in your sound? It’s hippified freak-folk. So what’s the solution? LA-based singer-songwriter/indie film composer Kenneth Pattengale attempts to solve the riddle by standing spread eagle, with a foot in each direction, varying between the off-beat and accessible sides of the nouveau-folk coin. And wouldn’t you know it, his latest album Storied Places mostly works, until he decides to play it safe. But until then, Pattengale fares well with the balancing act.

Such a cohesive strategy naturally runs the risk of musical ambiguity, but fortunately, Pattengale delivers his songs with an honesty and affability that keeps the album consistent. Thus, Pattengale’s fondness for the gentleness of Cat Stevens and the horror of Tom Waits come off not as restlessness but rather as understandings that songwriters’ aesthetics vary. On “Dig This Hole” Pattengale pulls from the Waits school of nomadic blues, with falsetto howl, drunken handclaps and a death rattle of a lead guitar line in order to underscore the protagonist’s desperate existential situation. Conversely, on the next tune, “On the Mend,” Pattengale illuminates themes of salvation, camaraderie and Atheism with soulful country-folk in the vein of Tumbleweed Connection-era Elton John, or, more recently, Iron & Wine.

Pattengale’s best songs here benefit from a similar two-sided approach to lyrics, from his straightforward paean to his daughter (“Charlie“) to the wryly adventurous “Memoirs of an Owned Dog,” on which Pattengale softly sings from the perspective of a passionate dog over a piano and guitar waltz. Elsewhere, Pattengale ensures success by calling upon his film-composer training to infuse his songs with a cinematic flair (the gypsy jazz of “Freckles” and the Morriconian Western solitude of “Desert”).

Despite all the aforementioned high points though, Pattengale sets the cruise at 50 MPH for the second half Storied Places, mostly neglecting the teeth shown earlier on the album in favor of lovely but repetitive and even near-precious numbers. Had Pattengale swapped out even one of the four gentle tracks that close the album for the rawer sound heard on “Dig this Hole,” Storied Places could’ve seamlessly succeeded on its duality of gruff and beautiful. Instead, Pattengale rides the intriguing momentum of his album’s first half to a slightly droopy anti-climactic finish.