Album review: Cold Fact – Rodriguez

In 1970, Detroiter Sixto Rodriguez recorded Cold Fact, a folk album that went largely ignored upon its initial release. Opener “Sugar Man” proved to be the most enduring song, an ode to a drug dealer embellished with enough eerie blips of strings and horns that it could freak even Radiohead out. It’s haunting, beautiful stuff— one wonders if in a parallel universe Rodriguez could have become another Bob Dylan or Jim Morrison.

Except that he kind of did. Thanks to unexpected (and for a long time to Rodriguez, unknown) mainstream success in South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand, Cold Fact was recently reissued on Seattle label Light In The Attic and now the artist may finally get the attention he deserves at home.

While the rest of the album doesn’t quite ever match the sonic experimentation of “Sugar Man” it still maintains its air of psychedelia, chiefly through Rodriguez’s Dylan-esque lyrics and escapist themes. “Only Good For Conversation” has him snarling over fuzzed out guitars: “But you’re the coldest bitch I know”. On “Gommorah (A Nursery Rhyme)” he equates Detroit to the doomed city while a choir of children sings to the tune of “America the Beautiful”. Some session work from Motown personnel alleviates the album somewhat, like the ambling Bob Babbit bassline on “I Wonder” betrays Rodriguez’s stream-of-conscious rant, but Rodriguez maintains his dark presence throughout.

Lines like “Gun sales are soaring, housewives find it boring/ Divorce the only answer, smoking causes cancer/ The system’s gonna fail soon, to an angry young tune/ And that’s a concrete cold fact” on “This Is Not A Song, It’s An Outburst: Or, The Establishment Blues” is ironically just as applicable now as it was 40 years ago. Perhaps Rodriguez’s music persists across time and continents because we still need it to.

Catch Rodriguez when he plays a rare show at the Park Bar on September 20th. Cold Fact is available to download on Amazon and iTunes.