A Street Called Straight
Album | Jeff Eubank
Private-press gem gets its first widespread release.
A Street Called Straight is a record unstuck in time in more ways than one. Singer/songwriter Jeff Eubank’s only album was released in 1983, but feels much more like a product of the ‘70s, and it remained almost completely unknown until its 2010 reissue on Drag City. The Chicago label has dusted off lost troubadours before, like the great Gary Higgins and Larry Jon Wilson, but Eubank operates in a whole different realm. His album alternates between soft Laurel Canyon-style folk-rock, sophisticated ‘70s pop a la Todd Rundgren, and art-folk not far removed from mid-period Tim Buckley. Eubank has the kind of velvety croon and melodic knack that make you think he could have carved out a niche for himself if only he had made A Street Called Straight several years earlier and hadn’t been such a mercurial, idiosyncratic artist to begin with. Instead, his lone LP fell through the cracks with nary a trace, noticed only by hardcore private-press esoterica collectors. Fortunately, we’re in the midst of an era when people like Eubank (along with an ever-lengthening list including the likes of Robert Lester Folsom and Billy Hallquist) are being recovered from the proverbial dustbin of history and properly appreciated for the first time.
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