“Salamander Song” sounds like a nature preserve in the beginning. But then Kris Cherry’s song introduces an acoustic guitar that carries a real percussive and expressive rhythm as the song goes on with spare percussion often only a shaker and with backing vocals augmenting Cherry’s luminous singing. The song is like a psych folk ballad about the “salamander man” who lived among the community but had webbed feet and scaly skin and was shunned by almost the rest of the society depicted in the song because people feared his appearance even though he was soft of voice and had a “heart of gold.” He tries to assimilate but is rejected and humiliated at every turn and when he tries to secure employment merely to survive he is denied even that and he has to resort to theft to simply eat and barely get by. In terms of the dreamlike quality of the song it’s reminiscent of the kind of thing Harry Nilsson was doing on the 1971 concept album The Point! But here the obvious inference one can make is that the tale of the “salamander man” is an allegory for racism and the way it imposes limitations on so many and others them so that they have no choice sometimes but choose to operate outside society’s established rules and often on its edges and beyond its boundaries to simply survive much less thrive. This them Cherry carries on to his remarkable new experimental folk album, the cosmically gorgeous Wonderworld out now where his use of field recordings and evocative atmospherics is entrancing. Listen to “Salamander Song” and the rest of Wonderworld on Spotify and follow Kris Cherry at the links below.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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