Intensely lyrical , historically aware, apocalyptic nouveau-ragtime cautionary tale by this superb NYC banjoist/tunesmith.  The oldtimey banjoist is also a first-rate songwriter with a potently lyrical edge and a distinctly oldtimey New York ragtime feel.
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A good song says something if there is some heart in it. Curtis seems to care about things past and things future, and things right here and there. He looks and sounds as quirky and mournful as the way things have come to be. This here is roots music reinvented for the new dust bowl that's about to blow us away. Eller's unique blend of augmented Old Timey is polished to a fish-eye mirror brandished by the unforgiven and forgotten in the face of punch proud America. This novel of a song writing style is no more insubstantial than Doris Kearns Goodwin or Flannery O'Conner with some of the wise humor of each.  Curtis has a big tent on this American Circus. Whatever he's getting at with that, I certainly hope it doesn't burn down. Circus tents are magical places of wonder. Sparks are very real and unforgiving. We should not bring the two together.  Patriots and revolutionaries can be an impediment to setting up the new government. Those folks keep reminding everyone why we fought the war and such. They keep looking under the rug and pointing out what hasn't been done. There's an artistic swirl of social observation in Curtis Eller's songs, and that prized commodity in American literature: the ability to empathize with a criminal, an enemy, the unforgiven or the forgotten. Curtis feels his way through history and beyond it in these songs. Sing along and you can feel it too.
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Curtis Eller could be Sufjan Stevens’ crazy older brother. Both Eller and Stevens are banjo-wielding, history-obsessive troubadours born in Michigan, but whereas Sufjan’s style is more sedate and gentle–the blue-eyed angel of Indie music–Eller is a little wilder looking, a more unpredictable performer, and isn’t afraid to get in yer face with his American tales of long-dead presidents, robber barons, and of course, Wirewalkers and Assassins, the title of his newest album.

Now residing in NYC, Eller was born and raised in Detroit and the city’s mythology still lives in his imaginative arsenal of reference points, whether singing about “diggin’ up Henry Ford” in the hard-charging “Firing Squad” or invoking our legendary boxing icon in the melancholic sweetness of “Save me Joe Louis.” Other songs have Eller singing in unusual roles, such as the distressed wife of a wirewalker in “The Plea of the Aerialist’s Wife” and as John Wilkes Booth in “The Curse of Cain.” And if one song about John Wilkes Booth isn’t enough for you, Wirewalkers and Assassins gives us two. “John Wilkes Booth (Don’t Make Us Beg)” is a rompin’ boogie that asks “Where is John Wilkes Booth when you need him?” (and later, Lee Harvey Oswald) and you kind of get the feeling that Eller isn’t singing about the 19th or 20th centuries here.

You don’t need to know anything about the Volstead Act or Robert Moses or the Hartford Circus Fire of 1944 to enjoy this sometimes sorrowful, sometimes foot-stompingly fun album. But it’s likely you’ll start getting curious as you find yourself singing these immediately memorable songs in your head.
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Those who loved Taking Up Serpents Again, Curtis Eller’s excellent 2004 collection of banjo-driven Americana, pre-rock roots-folk and ragtime ruminations, need not tread cautiously when considering his latest, another 10-track offering dubbed Wirewalkers and Assassins. Few records this year have been as adept at mining the successes of their predecessors while still sounding refreshing and new.

Serpents is more than an appropriate comparison for the new disc. It’s almost a mirror. Eller’s carefully plucked banjo and vaguely country-western vocals still steal the show but many of the same elements surface: the walking upright bass and punctuating accordion, the cooing harmonies and rabble-rousing stompers, brushes skittering across a snare as Eller fingerpicks his way through a verse.

And, above all, Eller maintains his focus – some may say his fixation – on historical narratives and anachronisms, the way lines pleasantly blur between past and present, fact and fiction, lore and legend. On Serpents, we were introduced to Abraham Lincoln, Buster Keaton, Amelia Earhart, Charles Lindbergh, Stephen Foster and a host of others. Now, it’s John Wilkes Booth, John Brown, Fidel Castro, Richard Nixon, P.T. Barnum and Joe Louis. (Elvis Presley returns for a second go-around.) With this mix of reference points and connotations, it’s almost less accurate to call the disc old-timey than other-timey.

Of the record’s 10 great tracks, the ones that work best are the ones that kick up some dust and get your blood flowing, whether it’s the harmony-backed choruses of “John Wilkes Booth (Don’t Make Us Beg),” the pulsing one-two, one-two throb of “Sugar For The Horses” or the borderline-frantic shuffle of the incredible “Firing Squad.” (Standouts from the more slowly paced tracks include the pedal steel weeping of “Hartford Circus Fire, 1944” and the naked, unadorned “Daisy Josephine,” a heartstring-tugger if Eller’s ever written one.)

The record’s two best tracks, though, are “Sweatshop Fire” and the album-closing “Save Me Joe Louis.”

On the former, Eller ponders the fate of the Confederacy, singing lines like “I’m going to get fucked up/ like Ulysses S. Grant” over banjo, spare percussion, wailing electric guitars and backing from a perfectly timed chorus of angelic female voices.

On the latter, a melancholy offering that takes place, in part, on death row, Eller’s brand of box-car folk slows down and the proceedings adopt an almost gospel-like hue with the addition of a moaning organ.

It’s a breathtaking end, a change of pace after a half hour of acoustic ballads and more toe-tapping fare, and another reminder that, no matter what’s come before, Eller’s still got a lot more ground to cover.
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