Michael Shelley: Goodbye Cheater

“I’m not into dicing emotions up,” sings Michael Shelley, “’cause that’s just for losers — and I like to win.” As you might figure from that line, the country-leaning songwriter Shelley is a proudly superficial lyricist, steadfastly refusing to delve into the moral complexities and ambiguities that make up everyday life. The songs on Goodbye Cheater deal with that great country and western (rock and roll) (rhythm and blues) standby: boys and girls and the mean things they do to each other. The above-quoted song, which is of course about a failed relationship, ends “Things were great, now they’re not so great / That’s the end of the story, let’s move along”. Pretty much says it all.

But that’s not to say there’s no there there. For one thing, Shelley, who co-founded Confidential Records, is a fantastically competent songwriter. (You want a better adverb/adjective combo than that? How about “superbly professional”?) He can verse-chorus-verse it up like nobody’s business; his tunes are catchy, quick, melodically sly without being too cute about it, rhythmically punchy without ever really asserting itself — and the two or three slow ones in the middle of the album are awfully pretty. I recently played Goodbye Cheater immediately after listening to Ray Charles’s superbly professional songwriting tour de force Modern Sounds in Country & Western, and Shelley’s album barely flinched. He’s just solid.

I wish he had more to say, though. His lyrics are skin-deep examinations of manifestly normal heterosexual relationships, which would make him hopelessly lame even if he didn’t belt out said lyrics in his Bud Light-thin voice overtop a slick faux-country backing band. When Shelley sings lines like “And then it hit me like a homerun off the bat”, or “A song comes on the radio and you flash across my mind”, you’ll cringe, and you should. The man’s corny, in other words, and the only way to tolerate his lyrics is in seriously controlled doses.

Fortunately, at 14 tracks in 33 minutes exactly, Goodbye Cheater is itself a controlled dose. So Shelley’s not the most interesting guy in the world; it doesn’t matter when the tunes are this good and this rapid-fire (all but two of the songs stay under the three-minute mark). The album has its share of melodic clunkers (“Hurry on Up and Fall in Love”, “Where Did I Go Wrong?”), but you know the next song is only two-and-a-half minutes away, so you groove with it. And over time, even his corniness becomes almost endearing — his unpretentious lack of ambition, his genial good humor, even the way he shamelessly milks well-worn romantic clichés. Shelley piles well-observed, lived-in (and, yeah, superficial) details onto those clichés, whether he’s spending an hour deciding which candy bar to buy or exulting over the fact that he won’t have to share a pint of ice cream with his girlfriend after he dumps her cheating ass.

All of which spiffy up his basic boy-girl lyrical theme just fine. But the details aren’t decisive; what makes Goodbye Cheater a worthy listen is the tunes, plain and simple. Because that’s what Shelley’s songs are: plain and simple, pretty and plain, country and western, rock and roll.