Grow Fins

Like Dylan, there isn’t much that can be said about Townes Van Zandt that hasn’t been said already. Yet he was and remains unfamiliar to most lovers of the singer/songwriter genre. A Texas legend, Van Zandt’s songs were the personification of his life and lifestyle. An habitual traveller, substance abuser, gambler and manic depressive, Van Zandt lived from song to song with little care or attention to his career, his health or his family. He died young at 53 and left a concise but impressive body of work, the best of which in my opinion rivals the poetry and eloquence of Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. The eponymous 3rd album is probably his finest studio album and was to a certain extent an attempt to re-market some of his earliest material which, though among the best he’d written was never satisfactory to him in it’s earlier recordings. 4 songs on this album originally appeared on his debut album, For the Sake of the Song but were re-arranged and recorded anew for this release. These songs are compelling and relentless in their ability to just enter your head and refuse to ever leave. Though I only discovered this album less than a year ago, I now count it amongst my favourites of all time.