R. B. Reed

Outsider Ballads

Beep Repaired Records

“Today’s sweet embrace is tomorrow’s strangle hold.” R. B. Reed

R. B. Reed’s album Outsider Ballads is the perfect soundtrack to the 1955 film The Night of the Hunter. It’s stark, creepy, beautiful and existential all wrapped up into a 36 minute CD. Reed is a singer/songwriter, but don’t misinterpret him as some neo-hippie in a coffee shop whose rants are backed by three chords and the truth. Instead, we hear a rich baritone voice crooning about topics ranging from murder to love. In other words, the songs on this album reveal an attractive voice singing about ugly topics.

Outsider Ballads was recorded in a day with Beep Repaired founding father Olie Eshleman at the helm, twiddling the knobs and adjusting the microphones. The CD sounds very personal and live. It’s like sitting in someone’s attic and listening to your favorite record. There’s a warmth and intimacy on this album that usually gets lost when recording to CD.

The strongest cut on this album is “Not Your Average John.” Taken from the pages of true crime, this song is about the double life of a door-to-door salesman who kills prostitutes in his off time. Reed’s vocals on this song go from murmur to wail, climaxing just before he sings about the last killing. In this last verse he set up the murder scenario like this: “Left hand wears a wedding band/But the right holds a kitchen knife/He’s going to steal your life from you.” The killer’s final victim is his own suspecting wife. As far as murder ballads go, “Average John” is just as terrifying as the traditional tune “Stagger Lee.”

Some of these lyrics scare the bejeezus outta me, while others are more humorous and clever. Take the lyrics from the final track, “Black.” R. B. compares all the types of people that wear black clothing. Rock and roll legends, Satanist, FBI agents, Goth kids, and Dungeons and Dragons gamers are all fodder for the lyrics of this song. In one example, the description of the Goth club music as “the soundtrack to the mating dance of vampire bats” makes me howl. And in the case of the D & D gamers, Reed bemoans that his favorite color is ruined by these trench coat wearing, twenty-sided die rolling tools.

By using humor, R. B. Reed makes the darker, morose lyrics more palpable and, in some cases, more poignant. In a song like “Taxidermied Love” the imagery of the singer being stuffed with treated cotton and kept by his ex-lover is both macabre and absurd. Just reading these words tells the whole story: “I could have been your only pet/If I survived the vivisect/for me at least you chose the most flattering pose/To seal our taxidermied love.” Once again, Reed executes gloomy lyrics with entertaining rhymes and imagery. And this juxtaposition hits you like a dry whiskey in a broken glass, in the parlance of Philip Marlowe.

This is an intelligent record. R.B. is not afraid to use fifty cent words like “corporeal” or “bourgeois.” So, if you’ve been looking for an album that reads like a hard boiled novel, this album is well worth your 7 dollars! You can buy this album from the Beep Repaired Records web page. Go to www.beeprepaired.com and get one of the 500 limited edition CDs with handmade packaging! Outsider Ballads bridges the gap between the pulp fiction of Raymond Chandler and the acoustic Goth of Leonard Cohen. These are songs to hang yourself to!