Album Review: David Ball & The Pioneer Playboys – Sparkle City

The band name on David Ball’s first album of original material in six years is no afterthought: it’s perfectly keyed to the music itself–a freewheeling amalgamation of classic country and Western swing, with some Latin and jazz rhythms thrown in–and the subject matter, which is all about the curious ailment Haggard termed “rambling fever.” Sparkle City is an album infused with restless pioneer spirit.

In fact, you might even say it’s geotagged: three of the tracks are titled after locations (“Tulsa,” “Alabama,” “Houston Again”), and most of the rest somehow engage with the transcontinental, and sometimes trans-Atlantic, comings and goings of a rambler, and the interpersonal complications that arise from such a lifestyle.

While “Tulsa” presents a fairly straightforward instance of hopeful, regret-tinged relocation–“I hope LA’s glad to see me, Tulsa won’t even know I’m gone,” Ball sings matter-of-factly–other songs present travel as more of a constant, perhaps even pathological, need. The singer has “rambling in his boots” (and some Latin rhythm in his hips) on “Along for the Ride,” and keeps open the procrastinator’s possibility of settling down “Maybe Tomorrow,” but definitely not today, on the fetching western swing track of that name.

Amid all this rambling, “Alabama” sways gently along, a dream of a rural paradise–and a woman–who can hold Ball once and for all. But it’s just a dream, and one that the singer himself would caution you against investing in too wholeheartedly. Case in point: He tries to warn the woman in “Smilin’ in the Morning” that theirs is just a temporary fling, but she falls hard anyway and ends up heartbroken when, true to his word, he hits the road.

Is our hero a restless romantic, or just a guy out to get some wherever he goes (a pioneer playboy)? “What’ll I Do If I Don’t Have You” and “Hot Water Pipe” seem to hint at conflicting answers. The former is a beautiful, open-hearted ballad on which Ball sounds nothing but sincere, dipping into the lower registers of his voice, while the randy “Hot Water Pipe” is a well-played penis joke set to a suggestive guitar riff.

“Houston Again” is rife with similar tension. Ball enjoys being a free-living man, so he’s avoiding Houston, where there’s a lover (and a lover’s family) determined to rope him in and domesticate him. But the reason he has to avoid Houston altogether is that he knows he’s susceptible to the life they’ve imagined for him there: if he gave it a chance, he’d probably like it. Maybe tomorrow?

The upside to seeing a rambler off is that farewell isn’t necessarily forever: there’s always the possibility that his journeys will bring him back around. That’s the album’s hopeful parting note in “So Long” (a phrase better, because less permanent, than “goodbye”), but it’s hard to tell if the singer’s being sincere or merely sweet-talking us, softening the blow of separation with the skill of a man who has spent a lifetime severing ties.

Let’s hope this rambler’s journey brings him back with more new originals before another six years has passed. David Ball was one of the most distinctive voices of the ’90s hat act boom, and he’s one of only a handful whose gifts have aged well into the new millennium. We need him now more than ever.