Home for Misfits

Album Review

Singer/songwriter Kaz Murphy is a natural storyteller who exhibits a knack for turning a colorful phrase as well as an affinity for exposing the darker side of his adopted hometown of Los Angeles. Several tracks on this character-rich disc chronicle Hollywood's underbelly. "Anything She Wants" offers a sad but affectionate portrait of a homeless woman who "somewhere back in the Fifties/she almost made the silver screen/became a friend of the movie stars/and one night says she made love with James Dean." In "Walk These Hills," Murphy wants to rescue a drug-addled ex-lover who has "been living in a cabin in the hills of Santa Monica." "Below the Skin" finds him "stuck in Koreatown/like a chicken on a spit." Even the more hopeful "Waitin' on Elvis," which has Murphy reuniting with an old love, mentions that the woman is running from "a dangerous man." This song also contains Murphy's most memorable couplet: "I'm shaking like a rockabilly preacher who's been waiting on Elvis/to come walking through the church house door." Not every song here is Los Angeles-based, however. In fact, the disc's most powerful song "Killin' Wheel," comes from small town America. This twangy rocker is a searing docudrama about the "prettiest girl in her whole high school" who enlists in the military on a dare. She discovers the war overseas has gone wrong, causing Murphy to "want to get her back here...I want to pull her off of that killin' wheel." He eases the story's grimness by including some peppy handclaps, Buddy Holly-like vocal hiccups, and an elegant pedal steel. Among the disc's virtues is how Murphy and his co-producer Rich McCulley enliven these story-songs with well thought-out arrangements. Violin and electric guitars fuel "Midnight Fire" while a Spanish guitar and accordion accent "Honey, Was That You?." On the terrific opening track, "Hardly Think About That," about a broken relationship with a singer, he alternates between singing in a gritty voice and softer one — a technique he returns to throughout the disc. Touches like these help to distinguish Murphy from the standard guitar-strumming troubadour and helps to turn his Home for Misfits into a winning collection of worldly wise story-songs.