Bobby Bare Jr: A Storm, A Tree, My Mother’s Head

Bobby Bare Jr.
A Storm, A Tree, My Mother’s Head
Naked Albino Records
[Rating: 4 Stars]

Oscar Wilde once mused that “life imitates art,” but on Bobby Bare, Jr.’s sixth album, A Storm, A Tree, My Mother’s Head, art imitates life. The thirteen song collection, which took the Nashville rocker four years to write and release, plays like a short autobiography of its author, with titles like “Your Goat is On Fire,” “Swollen But Not the Same,” and “Liz Taylor’s Lipstick Gun” alluding to Bare’s unusual but sharp sense of humor, and more somber tunes like “The Sky is the Ground” and the record’s title track reminding listeners there’s a serious, personal side to the man behind it.

On “A Storm, A Tree, My Mother’s Head,” Bare sings of an incident that almost left his mother dead in 2008, resulting in one of his most solemn, gripping songs to date. Throughout the album, traces of working man’s rocker Bruce Springsteen can be heard, while an at-times-subtle undercurrent of Nashville country runs through courtesy of growing up living and writing with his father, Bobby Bare, Sr.

Those echoes of Bare, Sr., are justified, too, as the Nashville legend lent his songwriting talents to three of the albums tracks, including closers “But I Do” and “But I Do (Walk Off Music).” Another highlight of the album is “Lost in a Puzzle,” which features co-writing credit from the record’s co-producer David Vandervelde as well as collaboration from My Morning Jacket’s Tom Blankenship, Carl Broemel and Patrick Hallahan. Bringing in elements of friends and family, the playful and the profound, the record is Bare’s most personal to date, and, accordingly, also one of his best.