Essential to the folk revival in late 1980s San Francisco--a mini-movement that sourced JA's "Surrealistic Pillow" and the musical terroir of the city--the fogs, the quiet, the Pacific light--was this beautiful album by the distinguished once and future punk rocker. The dozen love songs and other forms of songs here are closer to Judy Henski than classic punk. Still, Penelope addresses her rough and tumble past in "Full of Wonder" and the album is a kind of series of musical bouquets for a dead movement, and perhaps a few fallen musicians ( Phil "Snakefinger" Lithman gets the dedication; he plays bells on the song "Summers of War" ). Mostly, this recording shows that punkers and the alternative types who'd come to SF in the 1960s were more closely related than they seemed. Only fashions and manners separated their similar desire to escape the American Empire.
Houston's version of the Scots folk tune "Wild Mountain Thyme" is, I know, going to ornament some movie soundtrack someday; "Talking With You," another thing of beauty and a joy forever, is a piercing song of miscommunication, and "Waiting Room"...well, a particular summing up of the doldrums of the late 1980s. The Birdboys here include Steven Strauss, a talented multi instrumentalist still visible to lucky Berkeleyites; Mel Peppas's mandolin emphasizes the eastern Mediterranean sadness in some of these tunes; regular Houston collaborator Pat Johnson keeps it together. During this era, I once saw Houston play at a place in San Francisco and the crowd did something I've never seen since: they sat on the floor of the bar as if around a campfire to listen to her. I'm glad Penelope's still writing and performing--and I hope someday this key San Francisco album gets the audience it deserves.
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A moody, melodic debut that evokes the spirit of Nick Drake and Sandy Denny with its brooding images of loss. Mandolins, accordion, acoustic bass, and sparse percussion (usually tambourines and bells) almost qualify this as a contemporary folk album, but Houston's biting and somber approach draws from her punk and alternative-rock roots. The writing is inconsistent, and Houston's fragile voice is sometimes not as forceful as the material seems to demand, but overall this is one of the more underrated alternative music statements of the late 1980s.
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