Andrew Choi has a distinctive style. He’s intelligent and talented, as his credits reveal. The son of Korean immigrants is a Princeton University graduate with a PhD in philosophy from Ohio State University and a law degree from New York University. Before that, he was a concert violinist who attended the pre-college program at Juilliard. For the last ten years, he’s recorded under the name St. Lenox and has released four fantastic autobiographical albums full of quirky melodies, rococo flourishes, and strange but oddly familiar sounds.
St. Lenox’s insightful lyrics are full of humor, clever observations, and self-referential detail. He sings in a rushed yet intimate voice that suggests he has too much to say and can’t wait to express it all, even as Choi wonders why he is telling us his deepest thoughts and feelings. His latest release, Ten Modern American Work Songs, is yet another sardonic masterpiece. This fifth album fits in with his previous releases like five fingers in an artist’s glove who could knock one out with just one hand.
The album is (semi) sarcastically dedicated to the NYU Law Class of 2014, to which he belongs. Choi writes in the first-person confessional mode, with this one focusing on his student years, post-graduate work life, and professional success as an attorney. The songs deal with the stresses of college life, student debt, workplace struggles, and material success, with assorted side journeys to an amusement park and mountain retreats. The underlying theme has the narrator wondering if his sacrifices were worth it.
Ten Modern American Work Songs begins with “Eulogy for the Company Man”, a sly reference to Aaron Copeland‘s “Fanfare to the Common Man”. Choi’s tongue is firmly in cheek as he commends a fellow attorney who planned to retire early to enjoy life while he still had his health but died while still working for the law firm. The disparity between Copeland’s dignified laborers and a corporate lawyer is swept away by their shared mortality. One would think the lawyer had the better life, but the singer coyly intimates otherwise. St. Lenox croons with false bravado. He mordantly praises the man who was his mentor but never got to enjoy life. Choi presumably is afraid this will be his own fate. Perhaps the deceased lawyer (and the narrator) would have been better off doing manual labor.
“Eulogy for the Company Man” is marked as track zero. Like Gerard Manley Hopkins’ Margaret, he mourns for himself in the encomium. The eulogy serves as a preface to the chronology of the narrator’s life, the ten songs from which the record takes its name. Choi documents the hard work and financial costs of college and the grind of a law career. The singer compares his life in college and presumably afterwards in a law firm, to being a “Courtesan” with a “Lust of Life”. Working for a living is no better than being a whore, he muses. He then offers the details of life in Ohio and the move to New York City with stray details about respite on vacation, friendships with peers, and other concerns, including his career as a musician.
The ten individual tracks offer wry observations that emerge after St. Lenox’s emotional engagement with reflections about his life. For example, Choi offers life lessons to his nephew that could serve as a mantra for the modern age (i.e., an abbreviated list includes “Don’t apologize for someone else’s fuck ups / Don’t check your emails after 7:00 pm, dear God / Cause ignorance is the better part of valor / Leave your bartender a healthy tip this evening If you want to stay on the good side of karma”) and other pithy guidelines drawn from his experiences. The seemingly disconnected pieces of advice form a montage just as each track tells its own story as part of the larger picture of who the singer has become.
Ten Modern American Work Songs ends with St. Lenox wondering if he should have taken a different path. The final lines from the last cut, “On Fulfillment”, express his discontent. “Lately, I’ve been up at night yelling curse words in the dark? / As if the whole of my existence has been just a joke. / As if the whole of my career has been a big mistake.” The answer, my friend, lies in the self-examination presented here. The album reveals there is always time for new beginnings while working toward the greater goal of a worthy existence.