| Tom Morello: The Nightwatchman |
| Written by Derek Harrison | |||
| Tuesday, 20 September 2011 11:04 | |||
 The third album from The Nightwatchman is his Bringin' It All Back Home – the groundbreaking album which introduced the world to the "electric" Bob Dylan, to the horror of the folk purists. World Wide Rebel Songs, released August 30, 2011, is The Nightwatchman-goes-electric, but the comparison between that album and Bringin' It All Back Home ends there. World Wide Rebel Songs is hardly one of the greatest rock albums ever made, and though Dylan and The Nightwatchman both started out playing protest songs on acoustic guitar and harmonica, by the time Dylan went electric he had abandoned the protest folk, while The Nightwatchman is protesting harder than ever.
World Wide Rebel Songs follows on the heels of the 8-track benefit EP Union Town, a collection of original and traditional union songs from which all proceeds were donated to the America Votes Labor Unity Fund. The EP was The Nightwatchman's first release since 2008's The Fabled City, the follow-up to his 2007 debut One Man Revolution. Union Town was also the first release where The Nightwatchman was backed up by a band, a hint of what we would hear on his third full-length release only months later.
It shouldn't come as such a surprise that he would adopt the full-band sound. After all, The Nightwatchman is the alter-ego of Tom Morello, better known as the lead guitarist and co-writer for Rage Against the Machine, Audioslave, and more recently Street Sweeper Social Club. Morello studied political science at Harvard and used Rage Against the Machine as an outlet for his politics. After they disbanded, he began writing his own songs on his trademark classical acoustic guitar with the words "whatever it takes" scrawled below the bridge. Taking cues from Woody Guthrie, Billy Bragg, Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan, Morello has been taking his songs to the coffee houses since 2003, under the name The Nightwatchman.
World Wide Rebel Songs opens with a heavy harmonica leading a folk rock rhythm into a spoke-sung verse where Morello spouts predictable, generic call-to-arms phrases such as "history's not made by presidents and popes" and "let freedom ring," placed in contrast to the abstract phrase that serves as the hook and title "Black Sparticus Heart Attack Machine." The song closes with group 'ohs' which a reminiscent of the joyful optimistic sound of the Union Town EP, but here it comes off less convincingly and the song has little value beyond serving as overture of the themes throughout the album.
"Dogs Of Tijuana" on the other hand has less to prove and a lot more to say. Opening with the welcome sound of voice and guitar, the song is dark but optimistic, evocative but upbeat. The back-up vocals serve as a strong hook, counterpointed against the chorus line "The way is hard and long / but the dogs are coming home." Morello knows the union fight is a world-wide fight.
In "It Begins Tonight," Morello sets down his acoustic guitar for the first time while under the guise of The Nightwatchman. It's a standard hard rock song led by a riff that is far from one of Morello's best, but it includes a solo that will please fans of his unique electric guitar technique. "Save The Hammer For The Man," co-written and co-sung with Ben Harper is perhaps the strongest song on the album, with the deepest lyrics, strongest chorus clearly rooted in the sound of traditional union songs, great performances from both singers, and a two-guitar solo which puts that of the previous track to shame.
"The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse" is another highlight of the album. Slow, dark and yes, apocalyptic, with strings, mandolin and perfect backing vocals, it is a Leonard Cohen-esque song with a marching snare beat, complete with military imagery and female harmonies standard of Cohen. The rhythm fades out to the end of the song in such a way that the message is clear: the war is not over. If only the strings weren't played by a keyboard synthesizer, the arrangement would be perfect.
The harmonica returns to lead in the upbeat "Speak and Make Lighting," another song which is the result of a careful study of the tradition of union songs, featuring a gospel-esque call-and-answer. "Facing Mount Kenya" is a reggae song where Morello really evokes the Leonard Cohen is his voice and once again stresses that the fight is a global one and paints soundscapes with his lead guitar.
The string of strong songs continues in the lyrical "The Whirlwind." "How can you sit back and wait, the battle is raging" is the message of the whole album, hidden unstressed in the middle of a song in the middle of the album but it is the point Morello is making throughout. This story-song is the lyrical centerpiece, with a quick-sung narrative which warrants repeat listening if only to make sure you didn't miss anything.
"Stray Bullets" is led by the choir chanting "stray bullets raining all down" but features verses containing some of Morello's most convincing vocals. There is not a lot of content in the song but its passion and energy more than make up for that. "Branding Iron" is another character-study, another example of Morello's hitting his maturity as a songwriter. It's the first song where Morello isn't accompanied by the band, and as such it has its own internal rhythm the way a full-band song can't. This owes more to Dylan than anything else on World Wide Rebel Songs.
The title track owes more to punk than folk, but the lyrics superficial and the chorus is little more than cheese. This and "It Begins Tonight" are the worst but also (thankfully) the shortest songs on the album. The melody for the penultimate song could easily have come out of the traditional canon. The title "God Help Us All" is repeated over and over like a mantra, with Morello almost sounding like an old man in his delivery. It's the second and final song performed alone by Morello.
"Union Town," which was the title and opening track of Morello's recent EP, opens with his famous electric guitar playing. It's a rollicking, joyous group-vocal song which clearly shows Morello's knack for writing union songs in the spirit of the picket-line classics, an optimistic folk-punk call to arms that closes the album with victory march rather than a march to war.
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