Obsessed
(Zaius Tapes) LP $18.00
For the better part of five decades, Ron House has been dispatching his singular take on Americana via bands such as Moses Carryout, Great Plains, Thomas Jefferson Slave Apts & Counter Intuits. Yet in 2002 he self-released this album as solo CD, the most ambitious effort in his canon, and arguably his most ignored. It follows the front-to-back tale of an unnamed protagonist as he traverses the landscape of a disintegrating relationship. Early quasi platitudes descend into humiliating pratfalls, until a grudging perspective is achieved. Obsessed is an opus of maddening despair, wrapped around a Edward Albee-esque drama, played out enigmatically in a People's Court of song. Delivering key musical assists along the way are members of Movieola, TJSA, Jerry DeCicca & Noel Sayre. In the rarefied modus operandi of The Harrisburg Players, the tenor on Obsessed threads a needle through the sanguinity of Townes Van Zandt, Phil Ochs’s self-immolation and the cracker barrel charm of Michael Hurley. Edition of 300 copies.