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Zero 7
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed albums.
My Name Is Buddy
Generally favorable reviews
Based on 16 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 14 votes
Read user comments
Rate this album >
Album Info
Label: Nonesuch
Release Date: 06 March 2007
Discs: 1 disc
Genre(s): Rock, Singer-Songwriter
Summary
Van Dyke Parks and Pete Seeger are among the guests on the guitarist's rustic 17-song effort, which is told from the perspective of a cat, a mouse, and a toad(!).
Also By This Artist: Chavez Ravine
Also On The Web: Nonesuch
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Observer Music Monthly
It adds up to a light-hearted, sometimes poignant elegy for the American working man and his music.
Read Full Review >PopMatters
As great as Chavez Ravine was, My Name Is Buddy is more thoroughly successful, possessing a stronger musical identity and top-notch songwriting throughout.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times
Although serious themes are threaded throughout, it's light compared with Cooder's last work, the "Chavez Ravine" account of cultural displacement, politics and baseball. Maybe for that very reason, this is a better listen.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe
The music can be enjoyed apart from the story, but either way, this is a must-have for true Cooder fans.
Read Full Review >Uncut
It's frequently wistful, sad and nostalgic. Yet Cooder's eccentric storytelling style and his prankish, Sufjan Stevens-ish take on Americana also sounds oddly contemporary. [Apr 2007, p.99]
Mojo
Full of curios and cameos, My Name Is Buddy falls short of masterpiece but is dense with wonderful music. [Apr 2007, p.100]
Q Magazine
Another of Cooder's worthy experiments. [Apr 2007, p.117]
Hot Press
It’s a little long at 17 tracks, and hard to take in one sitting, but these songs present Americana in such an oddly compelling way that it’s almost impossible to ignore.
Read Full Review >Paste Magazine
This is not a record meant for parsing, though there are certainly some standout tracks... Instead it's meant to be consumed like you would a favorite book. [May 2007, p.64]
Billboard
Cooder has fine musical companions on his journey. [10 Mar 2007]
Rolling Stone
Musically, Cooder employs the pitch-perfect instrumentation that he's famous for.
Read Full Review >Hartford Courant
Although the folk songs fit the theme of the album, they don't showcase Cooder's skills as a composer.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly
Cooder's guitar work is lyrical as always, but the songs... are oppressively cutesy and faux naive. [9 Mar 2007, p.109]
The New York Times
The first half of “My Name Is Buddy” may not be for those who get their news from sources other than old social-realist novels, aren’t serious cat-fanciers or are older than 12. [5 Mar 2007]
Read Full Review >NOW Magazine
Whether anyone outside of the NPR listening audience actually gives a shit about what clever socio-political points Cooder is trying to make metaphorically is difficult to say.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this album is 9.0 (out of 10) based on 14 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Mick T gave it an8:
This is a great album because it is a vision brought to life, and done so with great skill and care for the nuances in music..tone and space and melody. This album captures the essence of Ry Cooder, but is not like other Ry albums. This is more like a story-scape. It's refreshing to hear an artist make a statement they want to and not pander to what they have done, or what people expect them to do. This is querky, skillfull and soulful...Ry Cooder. Yes, selfishly I would like to see more songs like Sundown Town and 3 Chords and the truth, but he gives me something else..he lets us into his imagination and view of contemporary music.
Jason K gave it a9:
Wonderful imagery, but requires multiple listens. This album has really grown on me unlike anything recently. Just the first cut is worth owning the album for, but after 10 listens I prefer to hear the whole darn thing. The artwork is stunning as well...hope they put out a vinyl version with larger prints. Unique, charming, full of humor, topical and great for driving. I really love this album. Thanks Ry!
Rainer S gave it a10:
It's nice to see Ry Cooder return to the Purple Valley, albeit with a little less pizzazz. People denouncing Buddy as cutesy should take a refresher course in humor and remember that it never hurts to put your tongue in your cheek once in a while (mind you, not all the time). And if you still think it's that bad, you can always tune out the lyrics. The music can hold its own any day.
peter h gave it a10:
Fantastic record it´s been a long wait
ALBERT H gave it a10:
Cartoon perfect.
Richard gave it a10:
Pitch perfect Cooder with a story that needs retelling
jodro gave it a5:
Please can we get real for a moment and leave the politically correct “Ry Cooder can do no wrong so we’re obliged to give him at least four stars no matter what he puts out” nonsense alone? Many of these critics appear never to have listened to Cooder’s older work, so when they write things like “Cooder employs the pitch-perfect instrumentation that he's famous for,” or more bizarrely, “My Name Is Buddy stands tall against Cooder's best work from the '70s,” (allmusic.com) they clearly don’t know what they’re on about. Regardless of whether one likes My Name is Buddy, or its predecessor, Chavez Ravine, one objective fact needs to me made clear, which is that these albums have very little to do with Ry’s solo albums from the 1970s and 1980s. Most of all, on both albums the greatest slide guitar player the West has ever heard is barely featured. It’s as if Cooder wilfully tries to disown his past as a guitar hero. Witness for instance the fact that he continues to block the official release of Les Blank’s fantastic documentary about one of the greatest concerts Cooder ever gave, in Santa Cruz in the late 1980s. It’s almost a crime against humanity that this marvellous film remains under wraps. And so on Chavez Ravine and My Name Is Buddy, Cooder for the most part plays sometimes nifty but overall fairly unremarkable background guitar parts. He’s also changed his vocals style. Gone is the biting attitude of his old vocals, to be replaced with a softer but also much less affecting manner of singing. So anyone who expects My Name is Buddy, and Chavez Ravine, to be continuations of his earlier solo efforts is likely to be disappointed. Judging My Name is Buddy on its own merits, it’s clear that the album is a bit of creative epiphany: a whopping 17 songs almost all written by the great man alone. Many have noted that Cooder is not the world’s best song writer, his strength is in interpreting songs, and even Cooder seemed resigned to this, witness how he never repeated the debacle of 1982’s The Slide Area, his first foray into writing most of the songs on his own records. Sadly, from a musical perspective, My Name Is Buddy isn’t much better. On the plus side, the lyrics are great, his comments on the songs amusing, and the overall political content laudable. But the songs, and execution, for the most part stripped-down acoustic, three-chord dirges in the style of 1940s and 50s American folk music, are not particularly stirring or original from a melodic point of view. One of the user-reviewers here at metacritic perceptively noted that the only truly outstanding track on Chavez Ravine was the last one, and things are similar on My Name Is Buddy. Musically the album gets better towards the end, when it moves away from the faux-trad-folk style. The rocky ‘Three Chords and The Truth’ is good and by far the best track is, again, the last. “There’s a Bright Side Somewhere” contains, gasp, a brief slide solo, and manages to recall the grandeur and heart-wrenching beauty of Cooder’s greatest solo achievement, “Across the Borderline” from Get Rhythm (1987)-ironically, in the face of his songwriting deficiencies, a track he co-wrote. But I challenge anyone to play these two tracks back to back, and not to come to the conclusion that “Across The Borderline” is by far the better track—a British newspaper even devoted a whole article, written by Richard Williams, to this track, which was covered by Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan, and which regularly moves people to tears. By comparison, “There’s A Bright Side Somewhere” is flat and unaffecting. It illustrates the whole problem with Cooder’s recent return to making solo albums, after a hiatus of nearly 20 years. One wishes him good luck, but why has he, in the words of another Cooder fan, “forgotten why we liked him so much?” Perhaps he wants to defy expectations, or is scared of them, but the outcome is that he simply does not play to his greatest strengths and so delivers work that’s substandard by his epic standards. The Cooder of the 21st century makes quality music of integrity, but nothing has so far matched the transcendent brilliance of his pre-1990 solo work. Perhaps
