Life'll Kill Ya

Amazon.com's Best of 2000
Early in his ninth studio album, Warren Zevon sings of Elvis Presley: "He was an accident waiting to happen... Most accidents happen at home." Zevon's own demon-infested past, still-mordant humor, and post-midlife peace of mind meet on Life'll Kill Ya, his finest effort in more than a decade. From visions of decay ("I Was in the House When the House Burned Down") to hopes of deliverance ("Don't Let Us Get Sick" and a cover of Steve Winwood's "Back in the High Life"), Zevon makes a compelling statement of strength and cockeyed wisdom. --Rickey Wright

Life'll Kill Ya,Warren Zevon,Artemis Records,Album Rock,Pop,Popular Music,Rock,Rock/Pop,Singer/Songwriter

Life'll Kill Ya

Average customer rating:

Already a "Dirty Little" Classic
Can't argue with his logic or his talent
The Meaning Of Life
A Blast of Refreshingly Pungent Air
mercy

Life'll Kill Ya
Warren Zevon
Manufacturer: Artemis Records
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Singer-Songwriters | Pop | Styles | Music

Pop Rock | Pop | Styles | Music

General | Rock | Styles | Music

Singer-Songwriters | Rock | Styles | Music

Album-Oriented Rock (AOR) | Classic Rock | Styles | Music

Classic Rock | Rock | Indie Music | Stores | Music

Singer-Songwriters | Rock | Indie Music | Stores | Music
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ASIN: B00003XASS
Release Date: 2000-01-25

Tracks:

I Was In The House When The House Burned Down
Life'll Kill Ya
Porcelain Monkey
For My Next Trick I'll Need A Volunteer
I'll Slow You Down
Hostage-O
Dirty Little Religion
Back In The High Life Again
My Shit's Fucked Up
Fistful Of Rain
Ourselves To Know
Don't Let Us Get Sick

Amazon.com's Best of 2000

Early in his ninth studio album, Warren Zevon sings of Elvis Presley: "He was an accident waiting to happen... Most accidents happen at home." Zevon's own demon-infested past, still-mordant humor, and post-midlife peace of mind meet on Life'll Kill Ya, his finest effort in more than a decade. From visions of decay ("I Was in the House When the House Burned Down") to hopes of deliverance ("Don't Let Us Get Sick" and a cover of Steve Winwood's "Back in the High Life"), Zevon makes a compelling statement of strength and cockeyed wisdom. --Rickey Wright

Customer Reviews:

Already a "Dirty Little" Classic.......2006-07-14

I love the way Warren Zevon uses words...he plays with them, he creates strange and interesting images, he creates an emotional tug that makes his listeners --his fans-- feel at once off-balance and at the same time ready for more. His songs drip with a sense of humor and dry wit that never grows old...and this cd stands as a shining example.

Love is a very old topic...one that in lesser hands could feel very tired, very worn. But this is Warren Zevon. Only he could write something as completely whacked and yet surprisingly tender and sentimental as the sardonic "For My Next Trick I'll Need a Volunteer" (track #4): "I can saw a woman in two/ but you won't want to look in the box when I do/ I can make love disappear/ for my mext trick I'll need a volunteer..." He continues to paint with queer brush-strokes ("I will be your hostage-o"?) and yet each strange lyric feels like a bullseye. It feels right.

Anyone who feels that Warren Zevon was a one-trick pony with one lone hit ("Werewolves of London") needs to take a closer look. He is heartfelt, deeply moving (consider track #5, "I'll Slow You Down")...he is bizarre (look at "Porcelain Monkey," a song in which the main character is caught "eating fried chicken with his regicidal friends")...and he's brilliant.

This is a near-perfect album (the only glitch is that it doesn't contain my absolute favorite Zevon song, "Carmelita," which has been described -and I have to agree- as the "prettiest song about addiction I've ever heard").

Can't argue with his logic or his talent.......2006-03-29

Warren Zevon is down right clever. You can appreciate his humorous lyrics but also realize there is a definite message within this group of songs. I'm sure at the time, Warren knew of his cancer and a handful of these songs portray his outlook. The title track, "Life'll Kill Ya", "I'll Slow You Down", "Hostage-O", and "Don't Let Us Get Sick" all fall in that boat. Most direct and to the point is "My S--t's F---ed Up". The s--t is the cancer, and it's all wrong (F---ed up) because nothing can cure the disease. The depressive blues arrangement fits the lyrics perfectly. Speaking of clever, track 9 is not listed on the outside cover which is for public view. I don't know who's idea it was, but it sounds like an idea of Warren's.
Warren leans heavily on acoustic guitar for tracks within this release. "I Was in the House When the House Burned Down", "For My Next Trick I'll Need a Volunteer", "Hostage-O", "Dirty Little Religion", "Ourselves to Know" and "Don't Let Us Get Sick" all follow that format. The beautiful "Hostage-O" particularly stands out. Warren is very seldom complimented for his vocals but he deserves accolades for his singing here.
"I'll Slow You Down" is one of the few electrical tracks and it comes across like a Roger McGuinn/Byrds composition. His rendition of Steve Winwood's "Back in the High Life" is excellent. I think he chose to do that song to portray cautious
optimism regarding his future. "Fistful of Rain" has superior background soulful vocals. Curtis King is one of the vocalists. He has performed for a handful of artists such as Bonnie Raitt, James Taylor, and Ry Cooder to name a few. His long time bassist, Jorge Calderon again joins him for this project and is professional as usual.
An excellent release. After listening to it from beginning to end, you will appreciate not only Warren's talent but courage as well.

The Meaning Of Life.......2005-11-07

Some artists are born with a divine vocation to enrich the meaning of our lives. A most personal, intimate revelation from such an artist will evolve into a universal light - an intense showering of sparks from one who is/was, as Kerouac would say, born to "burn, burn, burn like a fabulous roman candle". Warren had his one and only hit record in 1978: history's most literate party song, "Werewolves Of London". On the album, Life'll Kill Ya", Zevon begins with the concept of a the faded and jaded rock star, presumably inspired by the liberation from his former label and the disappointment of two massive commercial failures, "Mutineer" and "Mr Bad Example" (despite being two of his best albums). This premise affords his deepest self-examination. The universal light, however, from this album is the laughing-in-the-face of death relentless visionquest for truth and beauty in the life.

"I Was In The House When The House Burned Down" comes closer to telling Zevon's life story than any other song in his catalogue. It only recently occurred to me that part of the magic of the song lies in the way it elucidates how generations of people fought the good fight until the Seventies gave them the choice between the devil (go into advertising, publishing, the film industry, moderate politics or corporate rock) and the Lord, literally, because "you gotta serve somebody", even if you happen to be Bob Dylan. Zevon sings, with the conviction of someone who lived his own words, "I was in house when the house burned down / I met the man with the thorny crown / I helped him carry his cross through town". Yes, sometimes the holiest of holiest vocations will make a martyr out of you. This song is the best folk-rock you will ever hear, built around blazing harmonica and acoustic rhythm guitar.

The title track is introduced by a Randy Newman-esque piano solo - a whimsical melody cutting through the centre of the song and sustaining it. Zevon sings about death but his meaning, again, applies to life. In a song that also refers to "awful, awful diseases" which would later, ironically, seize upon him, there is something so pretty about the simple words, "Life'll find you wherever you go".

Sounding the most like the kind of material that first made Zevon famous, that unashamed easy West-Coast FM swagger and sway, "Porcelain Monkey" is the flip-side to "Graceland": "He threw it away for a porcelain monkey ...It's a rockabilly ride from the glitter to the gloom ... He traded it in for a night in Las Vegas ..." But where is the light? The chosen imagery conjures up Faustian implications and beckons the question: what price for a soul?

The best account I can give of "For Next Trick I'll Need A Volunteer" and its catholic quality is to say it has been, since the very first time I heard it, the only song I want played at my funeral. It is also fitting that I played the song incessantly on repeat when I personally fulfilled my life-long dream of directing my first feature film. It's that kind of song. Everyone one of us knows the feeling it captures: "It's lonely up here/When the tricks have been played/And the spotlights have faded". Zevon's humor balances perfectly with a humble, sad guitar strum and more breathy harmonica.

On "I'll Slow You Down" Zevon allows his vocals to be frail and it is incredibly evocative; a work of greater honesty and genuine human emotion than its closest relative - John Lennon's "Crippled Inside".

"Hostage-O" is the big love ballad. Sort of. It would be impossible to be more open-hearted and lay it all on the line: "I can see me bound and gagged / Dragged behind the clownmobile / You can treat me like a dog / If you make me feel what others feel". It's a love song, all right: one written for his fans.

"Dirty Little Religion" is a deliriously delicious up-tempo blues that strikes at the very heart of rock and roll, merging the sacred and the secular, just like Elvis, Ray Charles, Prince and the masters that came before them: "I'll make a dirty little religion out of lovin'".

Normally, a cover version would be out of place, especially on a masterpiece, but Zevon makes "Back In The High Life Again" his own. Although a gentle, quiet translation, the song still resonates much louder than Steve Winwood's original because Zevon is equal parts blessed and burdened with the gift and grasp of irony.

"My S***'s F***** up" starts out like a classic Groucho Marx routine: "I went to the doctor / I said I'm feeling kinda rough / Let me break it to you, son / Your s***'s f***** up". How can you not love it? The words, themselves, make the music; it's a talking blues like the kind Dylan perfected on "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan".

"Fistful Of Rain", a very fine folk waltz, further endears and defines Zevon's whole Quixotic visionquest: "In a heart there are windows and doors / You can let the light in / You can feel the wind blow / When there's nothing to lose / And nothing to gain / Grab a hold of that fistful of rain".

The beauty is in the chase, even when you are chasing the holy grail, itself, as Zevon and his protagonists do in "Ourselves To Know". Ever so compassionately, he extends the metaphor to include himself and his peers, many of whom didn't survive the journey of life: "Everyone got famous / Everyone got rich / Everyone went of the rails and landed in a ditch". Zevon's vocal performace here is one of the best of his entire career. He still sounds smart but he has never sounded more impassioned.

And "Don't Let Us Get Sick" is one of the best songs Zevon has ever written; indeed, one of the greatest songs ever written. He may still snarl a little when he sings "Don't let us get stupid all right" and, let's face it, he, more than any other artist in past 30 years, has suffered the injustice that emanates from the inherent shallowness of popular culture. But there is no bitterness here, whatsoever. There is, instead, humanity beyond measure, rejoicing in the pan-ultimate beauty and truth of living: "The moon has a face / And it smiles on the lake / And causes the ripples in Time / I'm lucky to be here / With someone I like / Who maketh my spirit to shine".

Zevon was often considered obtuse and aloof by more mainstream critics, who were all too slavish to popular culture and mindless trends. Some said he was too clever for his own good, in that annoying way like a car with buttons for everything. With "Life'll Kill Ya", he laid his heart bare and unleashed an inspirational blood-letting that proved once and for all how human he was, like the rest of us. The album is heartbreaking and heart-warming, all at once. Not only is "Life'll Kill Ya" the best album Zevon ever made, it is one of the greatest recordings you'll ever hear.

A Blast of Refreshingly Pungent Air.......2005-02-23

After several years out of the 'scene,' Warren Zevon played a tape of his new songs for Jackson Browne. Browne asked him who he was making an album for, and Zevon told him "no one." A few calls later, Zevon had a deal with Danny Goldberg's Artemis Records, and I'm sure no fan has ever been sorry.

He blasts us in the face from the get-go, with the Dylanesque folk fire of "I Was In the House When the House Burned Down," takes us through a couple of more-or-less typical Zevon moments (the title track, "I'll Slow You Down"), and then slaps us with "Hostage-O," a plea for help coming from the side of everyone who feels remote and emotionally helpless. ("You can treat me like a dog if you make me feel like others feel.") Brilliant.

He winds up the album with "Don't Let Us Get Sick." At the time it was sad and poignant, now it just wipes you out. ("Don't let us get sick/Don't let us get old/Don't let us get stupid, all right?/Just let us be brave/And make us play nice/And let us be together tonight.")

His observations are offset by sparse, mostly folky accompaniment (acoustic guitar, bass, percussion..a little piano).

Powerful, pungent, emotionally raw and fantastic.

mercy.......2005-01-10

Warren Zevon was one of the greats of rock and we hardly knew him. His lyrics always respect and even demand the intelligence of the listener. His songs were full of a basic decency, compassion and sadness.
His decency was disguised by cuss words and snarling wit - or should I say his decency was revealed by cuss words and a snarling wit? His moral compass was as perfect and as pure as the snows that are driven over the north-pole.
His songs were full of compassion because he took the place of us mortals and suffered with us all that we suffer - alienation, doubt, momentary ecstasys, and thwarted hope. He always told the truth and like most truth tellers he hardly ever got credit for it.
His songs towards the end were sad though the sadness was sometimes disguised. He had lost faith in the power of satire (if he ever really had it) and come to mourn over the complexities we call human living.
He was one of the greats and we hardly ever really knew him. We should hold him in our hearts for at least a bit more than a little while.