LITTLE ROCK — Take a look at these titles from Exene Cervenka’s latest, The Excitement of Maybe (Bloodshot).
There’s “Alone in Arizona,” “Falling,” “I Wish It Would Stop Raining,” “Dirty Snow.” Before the first note is played, you know there’s gonna be a broken heart involved.
And you know Exene, right? She was a founding member of L.A.’s X, one of the first punk aggregations to also flaunt their roots-rock leanings, dabbling with rockabilly and country influences. Los Angeles, the band’s 1980 debut, is a bona fide classic, and later albums like Wild Gift and Under the Big Black Sun affirmed the band’s reputation as trailblazers.
By the late ’80s, X, as well as Cervenka’s marriage to cofounder John Doe, was on the wane. She knocked out a couple of solo albums, Old Wives Tales and Running Sacred.
Cervenka, an accomplished visual artist, was also publishing books of her poetry and stories and playing in other bands, like X offshoot The Knitters, The Original Sinners and the punkish Auntie Christ (with members of Rancid).
There was an X reunion, which resulted in the albums Hey, Zeus from ’93 and Unclogged from ’95. She has also toured with X off and on over the years.
In 2009 Cervenka announced that she had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, the autoimmune disease that affects the central nervous system.
“I don’t have the money for medication, and I don’t have insurance, so I can’t act like I’m sick,” she told spinner.com during the recent South by Southwest Music Festival in Austin, Texas.
And now we are back to this new album - the tour for which, by the way, brings Cervenka to Little Rock’s White Water Tavern tonight for a show with fellow ’80s underground survivor Kevin Seconds of 7 Seconds.
The Excitement of Maybe is a follow-up to 2009’s Somewhere Gone, which was Cervenka’s first solo record in almost 20 years and treads a familiar, country-based ground, with lots of steel guitar, references to jukeboxes and broken-down lives. Old pal Dave Alvin of The Blasters (and The Knitters) plays guitar on several tracks.
“Already in Love” kicks off the album with tasteful, punchy horns and a universal tale of falling head over heels. Cervenka’s famously flat voice is more subdued, sounding almost coyingly sweet on tracks like “Falling” and “Brand New Memory.”
The heart of the album, however, may lie in the desolate heartache of “Alone in Arizona” and “Dirty Snow,” the latter boasting a layer of weepy steel guitar from Bloodshot label-mate Maggie Bjorklund.
It’s a naked and haunting performance; a sweet, midtempo tune that elegantly details the end of a relationship, the one-sided desperation to keep it going, and the loneliness that waits on the other end.
“I listened to love songs on the AM radio in our old 1959 Dodge,” Cervenka says of her childhood in press materials accompanying The Excitement of Maybe. “In the early Sixties I heard great song after great song. Ray Price, The Shirelles, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash … and almost all of them love songs. Sad ones, happy ones, funny ones, tragic ones. That’s what 5-year-old Exene figured out. But love, on the other hand, I can’t seem to figure out.”Music
Who: Exene Cervenka with
Kevin Seconds
Where: White Water Tavern,
2500 W. Seventh St., Little
Rock
When: 8:30 p.m. today
Price: $12 at the door
All ages: Yes
(501) 375-8400
whitewatertavern.com
Style, Pages 51 on 04/03/2011