Written,
performed, and recorded entirely by SMITH, the disc's nine
songs are a musical diary about life in the city where he
grew
up. In words ("Downtown Trip, "Keepin' up")
and sound ("Frisco Fog Eclypse"), San Francisco
figures prominently here.
"I
was working on Troubled in the midst of the dot com boom and
felt that the place I grew up in was fast fading. I wanted
to record things that had meaning to me."What many
have called the Bay Area's second Gold Rush seems anything
but on this disc. Instead SMITH captures an emotional urban
landscape whose streets mirror the protagonist's own doubts
and fears. But as he readily admits " I like the dark
stuff."
There
is hope as well. Soprano Claudia Berman who has performed
with the San Francisco Symphony Chorus appears as the "angel
of consolation" on the title track, while Sam Bass of
the band "Deadweight" weighs in on cello
on "Cry,
Sigh, Scream."
