Cut Worms Cut Worms Review: A Deceptively Upbeat Throwback to a Simpler Time

Max Clarke’s Cut Worms risks being a cutesy curio. The Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter certainly skirted that line on his first two albums, with their deeply earnest lyrics about being hopelessly in love. The naïveté of Clarke’s songs, not to mention their nostalgic production, seemingly recalls a different time. Despite music that can come off as overly precious, though, Cut Worms is a tight set of songs that display Clarke’s facility for songcraft.

The album’s first track, “Don’t Fade Out,” kicks off with a brief, punchy blast of piano before segueing into Clarke’s assured guitar playing, which is always locked into one confident riff or another. Occasionally, the musician’s grooves are so organized and systematic that they can feel repetitive, as on “Living Inside” and “Use Your Love! (Right Now),” but they’re mostly taut and achieve a nice momentum over the course of the album’s songs.

One of the canniest things that Clarke does here is cap many of the tracks with a guitar part that beautifully harmonizes with the vocals that came before. On the lovely “Take It and Smile,” for instance, guitar and piano often serves as a call and response with the singing, while on “I’ll Never Make It,” Clarke’s distortionless electric guitar acts almost like his subconscious, as he intones about doubting if he can survive without his paramour. Then, during the song’s bridge, he breaks into a guitar solo whose high-pitched whine mimics the sound of weeping.

Most of the musical references on Cut Worms can be traced back to just before the Beatles conquered the world in the 1960s, but the reedy quality of Clarke’s voice sounds unmistakably like John Lennon’s, while the verging-on-cutesy nature of his songwriting recalls that of Paul McCartney. Furthermore, the chipper, sock hop-style “Let’s Go Out on the Town” wouldn’t sound out of place on the Fab Four’s debut album, Please Please Me.

That song doesn’t quite achieve the effervescence it’s aiming for, as Clarke’s voice is slack and dejected-sounding. And he runs into a similar problem on “Ballad of a Texas King,” where he doles out pleas of romantic desperation in an almost affectless drawl. But maybe that critique misses a wrinkle in Clarke’s deceptively simple romantic yarns.

While “Let’s Go Out on the Town” at first scans as a light-hearted ditty about the desire to “keep on dancing all night long,” a closer listen reveals that the narrator is seeking to outrun his existential dread: “Now it’s quarter after five/Ain’t it hard to be alive?/Oh, but I don’t wanna die.” On “Living Inside,” Clarke beautifully compares his wavering confidence to fair-weather friends. In that way, the writing on Cut Worms consistently surprises and exceeds expectations.