You must realize by now that you've been tricked by Vic Chesnutt, the Br'er Rabbit of folk music. He doesn't write songs, he writes short stories. In Merriment, ghostly, dream-like images flit across your brain like fingers across pages, orchestrated by Chesnutt's frail voice and sinister lyricism. Chesnutt doesn't write songs, he directs and stars in film shorts: brief vignettes of wintry, slow-motion nativities radiating holiness and tableau dioramas of circus train wrecks. Vic doesn't write songs, he paints crude, unnerving folk art-- scenes like the album cover in which a smirking misshapen man with a bandaged head stands in the middle of a dirt country lane holding 11 roses and a homemade sign.