We first saw him perform at Appleton, WI’s Mile of Music in 2019 (Mutts, another group I adore, were his backup band) and then saw him play at Mile this past August on a gorgeously hot afternoon in the parking lot of Emmett’s (he didn’t have his vinyl record yet but I got a sweet t-shirt).

While I have no clue what he played back in 2019, I do know that in 2021 he played most of the tracks that appear on his latest release Sinner-Songwriter. A few of my top tracks from the shows and from the record are the album opener: the rocking “Feels Like Home,” the gorgeously soulful “O, Hallelujah,” a crowd stomping singalong (hilariously messed up at both 2021 shows by the audience…clearly we are all out of practice singing in public) “Send Me There” and the devastating “Tell Me How I Sound Again.” Before most of the songs, Scales shared either funny or heartfelt and authentic stories that gave deeper insight and meaning to the songs. While not on this record (all of his material is original), he concluded the Anodyne set with an acoustic stroll through the audience, singing “Stand By Me” – it was magical.

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Best known for his song “Whole Wild World” (1977 – considered by many to be one of the best punk/alternative singles of the era and of course he performed it on Saturday night), Eric continues to write and has just restarted touring  after the pandemic pause. Transience is his latest release and just his 8th LP in over 40 years.  It’s jangly singer-songerwriter styled rock with an intimate, deeply personal feel. Eric’s liner notes give context to each track – he describes the album as “a succession of Raymond Carver short stores.” The opener “Father to the Man” is about his own father who sounds like he was a very conflicted, challenged man. I’d love to know more about “The Half of It” – in the notes he alludes to “three halves” which happened in Hollywood “knocking aside Ray Davies, Neil Young, Kenneth Anger, Nick Lowe, Marie Prevost, Donald Sutherland, The Day of the Locust and some dumb Hollywood studio tour.” The song “Creepy People (In the Middle of the Night)” has, while not sounding “punk” in the standard definition of the genre (it’s more like Sticky Fingers-era Rolling Stones), the most punk sensibility: “Creepy people turn a creep profit, manufacture the steroids and the psychiatric conditions, the terminal illness, the long life-extending treatments that are so much more profitable than the cures. Creepy people close down libraries and schools, and cut the education budgets. Creepy people want to populate the world with morons who’ll believe anything they’re told and do anything they’re told to do.” “Indelible Stain” is one of my favorite songs on the LP – it has a 60′s psychedelic sound and a dreamy, hypnotic groove.

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