Paleface told me in a recent interview that this record was focused on songs that are fun to play on the road, and that level of live energy is easy to find throughout the aptly titled The Show Is on the Road.
Highlights and Bottom Line
Paleface has always been good at sticking to the rawest edge of his songs, and that raw integrity persists on The Show Is on the Road. Backed on four tracks by Seth Avett (the Avett Brothers), the disc indeed feels much more of the North Carolina music scene than Paleface's former hometown of Brooklyn. Tunes like "A Cheatin' Song" (purchase/download) and "If Only I" (purchase/download) embody Paleface's natural gift of sounding smoothly unpolished and, as such, are some of the best tunes on the disc.It's clear, though, that the artist felt a separation between the songs on the disc and those he wrote in his former life as a New Yorker, and the tune "New York, New York" (purchase/download) admits as much, bidding a fond (but, perhaps, at long last) farewell to the concrete jungle. If this record is any indication, though, the move was a wise one. Paleface continues to be one of the best remnants of New York's anti-folk scene.
