Album Review

Robbie Fulks is one of alternative country's most versatile performers. He's equally at home rocking as he is honky-tonking, his lyrics borrow from Appalachia one minute and modern irreverence the next and his voice is as comfortable belting a high tenor as it is sinking into quiet, creeping darkness. On his latest release, Couples in Trouble, Fulks spreads his wings farther than ever, incorporating string and brass arrangements and plaintive piano into his Americana. The opener, "In Bristol Town One Bright Day," is a Dock Boggs-style banjo ballad, but that mood soon gives way to the gentle electronic swirl of "Anything for Love." "Mad at a Girl," a winsome slice of pop with Memphis horns, morphs effortlessly into the Tom Waits-inspired "Brenda's New Stepfather," a sleazy, New Orleans-kissed, white-trash romp. Despite the vast amount of ground Fulks covers with this self-produced effort, it's far more cohesive and ultimately more satisfying than his major label rock dalliance, Let's Kill Saturday Night -- proving that Fulks works best when he has no one to answer to but himself.

MEREDITH OCHS
(August 20, 2001)

read this on rollingstone.com