Stories of Light and Dark in Warren Zevon's Excitable Boy

If bars didn’t have closing times, Warren Zevon would have had at least three more albums. Zevon’s albums are like conversations with an old friend, each track prompting a “did I ever tell you about the time when…?” Excitable Boy, Zevon’s third release, helped cement him in the public eye as a sort of crassly deadpan, post-Vietnam folk hero. From the hysterically cynical “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner” to the bitingly reminiscent “Accidentally Like a Martyr,” the album drunkenly drives the line between shadow and light.