Armed and Dangerous

Ammunition
Tim Easton
(New West)

"Songs are ammunition," Tim Easton writes in the liner notes to his fourth CD, "Ammunition." That makes Easton a sort of soldier-of-fortune, I suppose, a one-man A-Team packing an acoustic guitar and loaded for bear.

On his first album in three years, this Americana mercenary is targeting some of troubadours' usual suspects: Loneliness, intolerance, hypocrisy and war. And he's doing it in a fashion that recalls the early years he spent busking his way across Europe. "Ammunition" was produced by Easton and Mark Howard (and on three tracks, Ed Ackerson and the Jayhawks' Gary Louris), and recorded in Joshua Tree, Calif.; Minneapolis; Los Angeles; Cleveland; Alaska and Columbus, Ohio, but the finished product is a cohesive statement from a world-traveling singer-for-hire.

One of Easton's trademarks has been a penchant for turning out albums that sound different from one another. "Special 20" (1999) was a rootsy affair, influenced by Bob Dylan and John Prine, among others. "The Truth About Us" (2001) was more experimental, along the lines of pre-"Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" Wilco � most of whom played on the album. "Break Your Mother's Heart" (2003) had a '70s California vibe. That brings us to "Ammunition," a spare, unvarnished disc that is more somber than the previous three. It's an especially effective approach for an itinerant musician whose means of feeding himself is staying on tour, usually alone.

Although Easton is joined by a small army of big-name Americana guests, including Louris and Tim O'Reagan from the Jayhawks, former Son Volt bassist Jim Boquist, Tift Merritt and Lucinda Williams, "Ammunition" is first and foremost a singer-songwriter album. Williams is front and center on "Back to the Pain," but Merritt's backing vocals on the sweet love song "Next to You" are barely there. On eight of the 13 tracks, Easton handles all of the instruments, primarily guitar and percussion.

Some of Easton's songs on "Ammunition" work on multiple levels. The opener, "Black Dog," could just be a sweet song about a black dog. But there's also that deeper, metaphorical level in which the canine in question is a certain world power known the world over for globetrotting/police actions. This is the black dog Easton likely refers to when he sings, "Black dog in the warm sunshine / Looks like she's lost her mind / Why don't we call her back?" and "Neighbors are getting tired black dog is in their yard / Mend your fence a time or two before you have to start anew."

"Oh People" and "Not Today" suggest relationships that have soured, quite possibly including one with the U.S. of A.

Other tracks are more direct. "Ammunition" is a personal album throughout, but Easton merges the personal and the political. "J.P.M.F.Y.F." (which stands for Jesus Protect Me From Your Followers) calls out the self-righteous types who "turn love into fear and hatred," the same ones who "tell me on my doorstep that I will burn in hell" and have "one hand on the Bible and the other in the purse."

One of the most arresting tracks is "Dear Old Song and Dance," a somewhat fond goodbye to drugs. Judging by the laundry list he reels off, the time has come none too soon for the narrator, who is "waking up sober in Amsterdam."

Two of the cuts, the bluesy "C-Dub" and "News Blackout," pay obvious homage to Dylan's enduring influence on Easton. The up-tempo, harmonica-spiked works evoke "Bringing It All Back Home"- and "Highway 61 Revisited"-era Dylan, and "News Blackout" has an added and appropriate political edge to it as Easton sings, "I had a dream, I had a dream, that the president did come clean." But the messenger here, namely mass media, is scrutinized as closely as the message. In the end, the newspaper and the TV end up in the trash.

The disc closes on an optimistic note, though, with the standard "Sitting on Top of the World." And as that world turns, we are left to assume that this traveling soldier of song has reloaded and readied for another tour of duty on the endless highway.