MOVING INTO THE LIGHT
Parker Millsap describes a skittering existence that spills from his life into his music.
That, in part, explains the sound of his new album, “Other Arrangements,” as well as its title.
“I’m a chronic furniture rearranger,” the singer-songwriter says. “If I’m in my house and feeling uninspired by a song, I’ll move things around. I’ll move a piano to another corner of the room, whatever it takes. This happens about every three months. And I think of songs and their arrangements the same way. I’m constantly changing them a little bit at a time.”
That approach, in part, explains the tone and themes of “Other Arrangements,” particularly with regard to its predecessor.
Two years ago, Millsap released his third album, “The Very Last Day,” with a title that aptly conveyed his headspace at the time. The songs were wintery, with an end-days sense of unease and tension.
“I guess my setting at that time was in Oklahoma, in a not-toopretty town, watching trucks drive by on a gravel road, watching ‘The Walking Dead’ and reading Stephen King books,” he says. “Maybe not the most healthy place.”
That dark time and space made for a compelling record that pulled listeners into Millsap’s darker corners. “Other Arrangements” finds him writing from a brighter spot.
“I just wanted to see if I could write pop songs that were fun to play live,” he says. “Not in the context of the geopolitical landscape or where you have to know what a truck stop chapel is to get it. This one is more good times than end times. Not every song has to be a novel.”
Millsap, who plays the Continental Club Thursday, works with his familiar rudiments — his soulful voice running from murmur to howl in a roots rock setting — but the songs are punchier, with a red-blooded vitality, as he probes human connections more than the inward quality of his last re-
SINGER-SONGWRITER PARKER MILLSAP BRIGHTENS UP ON ROOTS ROCK “ARRANGEMENTS.”
cord.
So “Other Arrangements” is an interesting next step after “The Very Last Day” and “Parker Millsap,” from 2014, which served as an introduction for many listeners to a 24-year-old native of Purcell, Okla., whose music had a natural ability to swing from smoky and slow to fiery and cathartic, not unlike the music made by Tom Waits.
“I’ve found I can’t really escape myself,” Millsap says. “It always sounds like me if I’m singing and playing guitar. There’s always going to be something that sounds like blues or soul or gospel, just from by upbringing. But I’m also aware it’s kind of malleable. So if you can’t escape yourself, at least you can try to push it around a little.”
While the new songs are delivered with a directness and urgency, they still reflect a careful construction in their alliteration, turns of phrase and an openness that allows for some varied interpretation. And they’re less fixated on end days than they are on the complexities of connecting with other people.
“She” is an appreciation of a significant other, and particularly the way she calls Millsap on his faults.
“I feel like there are too many weird songs where somebody gets put on a pedestal,” he says. “It’s easy to deify someone. But the other things are sometimes what makes a connection magic. So I guess it’s a love song, or a somewhere between a love song and something else, something tougher.”
And Millsap crams such thoughtful fare into some compact vessels. The majority of the 12 new songs clock in under three minutes.
“I was thinking of a lot of my favorite songs,” he says. “How they make me want to hit ‘back’ and listen to them again and again. I love jazz, but that’s a different space than what I’m doing. I didn’t want something long and winding. I wanted it toned down. Long jams aren’t wrong, they’re just not me. Of course, I might change my mind next year … .”