now then (Compass, 2025)

The recent and unexpected death of Todd Snider reminds that none of us are immune from the passage of time, and (as we are reminded here within "Ol' Folks") that we must give flowers while we can, and that includes to under-appreciated (by any commercial measure) singer-songwriters.

Kudos then to the always engaging Robbie Fulks, now comfortably into his 60s and increasingly introspective, who has delivered his 17th collection of original songs.

With acerbic honesty augmented by acute awareness of familial circumstance brightened with self-deprecating amusement, "Now Then" finds Fulks exploring easy-flowing, musically atmospheric alt-country (and more) of a variety he had largely set aside for well-received acoustic and bluegrass explorations the past decade since "Gone Away."

The difference perhaps is that he is now recording in environs (Jackson Browne's Santa Monica studio) and with musicians he had likely not imagined during his days of insurgent country. Fulks' recent songs provide fresh perspectives on familiar themes with greater vocal control and a glossier presentation than exhibited decades ago.

Looking back as one does as senior statesmanship engulfs an artist's viewpoints, Fulks' latest finds our narrator reflecting on childhood "Ocean City" family vacations (complete with a slick Dionne Warwick and The Spinners reference) while recognizing how some may now attempt to shuffle him to the side declaring, "I'm considering extreme measures" ("Workin' No More Blues.")

Pete Thomas's drumming propels "Now Now Now Now Now," a fatherhood song that reminds us of the Fulks of the previous century, the one who created early masterpieces such as "The Very Best of Robbie Fulks" and "Couples in Trouble":

Though you live far from me, I can see you clear
Your ethical lines, your rejection of mine.
You may be a giant in your fairytale land but I know your true size
You'll never live down that morning you crowned.
And your Drake can't touch my Talking Heads
Nor your Hacks my 'KRP
And your New York's a Potemkin fraud
And the one messiah's me.

"The Thirty-Year Marriage" and "My Heart, Your Hands" provide contented glimpses of family and relationships. "Savannah is a Devilish Girl" advances the cross-album dichotomous theme of reluctant aging tied to greying contentment, with Jenny Scheinman's fiddle and his own frailing banjo providing additional texture:

But I didn't die pretty like James did
I found a groove and lost that rebel kid
Somewhere along the ride.
Now there's a dusty five-string on the shelf
And the Little Back River won't fish itself
It's time I made a song to live inside.

As always lyrically keen, "Poor and Sharp-Witted" pulses with additional energy while Fulks croons with countrypolitan intensity alongside Eleanor Whitmore on "Ol' Folks," which may be a pun, intentional or not. "Your Tormentors" is dark, musically and lyrically — "How did the neighbors know what was going on?"—reminding us of Tracy Chapman's "Behind the Wall":

A family may be just like a prison
And a little town will keep its prisons strong.
The weakest ones are pitied, but they're burdens
And the warden's word is final, right or wrong.

Jay Bellerose's percussion and Duke Levine's electric guitar add considerably to "Your Tormentors" foreboding mood. Levine plays across the majority of the album, usually alongside Kevin Berry's lap and pedal steel.

On an album that is accepting if not even largely positive in its reflections of memory, leave it to Fulks to close the album solo with a song entitled "Nobody Cares" and the words, "Nobody cares about me, and man that's fine."

Is Fulks content today, satisfied with his life? Does he hold regret and recrimination toward those he has transgressed against and who have hurt him? Has he become the grandfatherly type, amused by a younger generation discovering that which he has known for years?

One imagines the answer to all these questions is yes.

And there's nothing wrong with that. There is also nothing wrong with "Now Then." Like Robbie Fulks himself, "Now Then" takes some getting used to, but once fully absorbed one can't help but appreciate its fractured reflections of live experience.