Rolling Country 2009 Thread

also, if anyone wants this great Homer and Jethro comp my buddy Dave Duncan made, lemme know offline. they're great artistes and masters of comedy. easily as good as this Manilla Music band we caught on the Carnival Cruise ship; four short guys from Manilla dressed in Sgt. Pepper-era Beatles outfits playing Beatles tunes, just excellent, and Homer and Jethro do what I think is the greatest Beatles cover of all time, "I Want to Hold Your Hand," '64, plus "No Hair Sam" and you won't believe "Winchester Cathedral."

Welcome back, Edd!!! And wow, when you are back, you are back. Now the rest of us all have some catching up to do.

By the way, Edd was my "most similar voter" in Pazz & Jop, with a score of 3.93, whatever that means, seeing as we both voted for two albums by guys named Johnson. (Second-most similar to me was Corey Du Browa, who also voted for one Johnson and a Knux.)

My new favorite ballot (well, for right this second anyway) came from somebody I never heard of before named Bill Holmes, whose favorite single was "Dynamite," my favorite song on the Mother Truckers album, and who also voted for "Elsie," my favorite song on the Boss Martians album, both of which I'm just happy to see somebody else listened to (though Boss Martians did get at least one other singles vote, for a different song, apparently.) Bill Holmes also voted for a single by the Paul Collins Beat, who I had no idea existed anymore:

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2008/685403

Anyway. I liked both the 3-song Those Darlins EP and 4-song (two of them the same) Those Darlins demo I heard last year (favorite song: probably "The Whole Darn Thing," which is about eating every part of a chicken), though not enough for them to make my top 150 album list (like both Mother Truckers and Boss Martians did). Had I expanded the list to 200, the EP probably would have made it (as would have the Trailer Choir and Big N Rich EPs from last year, though that's getting pretty marginal admittedly.) And I look forward to hearing a whole Darlins album.

Btw, the URL for my Rhapsody blog has mysteriously changed as they've overhauled that portion of the site, and the URL for my '07 lists with it. So here:

http://72.47.254.75/chuck-eddys-chuck-it-all-in/

http://blog.rhapsody.com/2008/12/chuck-eddys-best-albums-of-the-year-countdown-part-3-numbers-1---50.html

'08 lists, I meant. (Still writing '08 on my checks, too.)

Listening to the new Flatlanders album in the background now, and liking it more than I expected. Some fairly didactic songs about the bum economy and immigration, maybe, but those seem well-personalized and geographically pinpointed and the melodies and singing are frequently grabbing me. Noticed what sounded like a stinker of a Joe Ely song too (I assume that was him anyway), and other sections are blander than I wish, but I'll keep it on for now.

Liked the new album by some Brooklyn alt-country group called the Defibulators more than I thought I would, too -- energy and humor helps a lot. And the new album by the Greencards less than I thought I would (polite Duhks-style worldbeat delusions are boring me quicker this year, apparently), though one song at least had sub-Little Big Town (sub-sub-sub Fleetwood Mac) harmonies mixed into its bluegrass.

And yeah, I've been liking the city songs on that Chuck Mead album, which I should probably play more despite my reservations about his apparent lack of an interesting voice. Thought the more Rockpiley tracks were "She Got The Ring" and "I Wish It Was Friday," and he does wanderlust ("Albuquerque") and wistfulness ("A Long Time Ago") pretty well. "Up On Edge Hill" seems to have a good plot about the sort of folks who live up there, and "Out On The Natchez Trail" is a decent go-west song, and I like how "Gun Metal Gray" sound kind of like "Ode To Billie Joe."

Speaking of wanderlust and heading west, the big news in my life is that it increasingly looks like we'll be packing up and moving to Austin before springtime -- in fact, my Texas-born better half is down there as we speak, scouting out possible dwellings. So if anybody reading this knows anybody down there who I should alert of my impending arrival (especially but not only if they're the kind of person who loves helping unload lots of boxes of records off moving trucks), by all means email me.

What else? New Neko Case album coming out soon, apparently, and I've never remotely paid attention to her, and I'm thinking now that maybe I should, since I heard a song by her in Starbucks a couple months ago that I have to confess sounded way better than most of the other songs I hear in Starbucks, plus she comes off charming (not to mention cute) in this new cover story in Paste I just read in the bathroom. Even halfway considering subscribing to this magazine called Hobby Farms that she recommends: "Who likes to read about goats? I do! You know, the Caprine subfamily? Lowline cattle, anyone? Weeder geese? Guinea hens on tick patrol? Draft horse logging? That's what I'm talking about."

Interesting piece by my former Farmington, Michigan middle school classmate R.J. Smith in tomorrow's NY Times about the resurrection of King Records in Cincinnati: Another key to King’s success was its racial pragmatism. It’s probably a stretch to call Mr. Nathan a progressive, but he was colorblind in his pursuit of the widest possible audience. He didn’t just record both white and black acts; he had his ace R&B studio band playing on country records, and his country bands trying their hands at black pop hits, an almost unthinkable practice at the time.

The Stanley Brothers, for instance, did a version of Ballard’s “Finger Poppin’ Time,” and the African-American shouter Wynonie Harris covered the honky-tonk singer Hank Penny’s “Bloodshot Eyes.” It was a way of getting the most out of a hit, and perhaps it was Mr. Nathan’s stubborn nature to argue to those who told him blacks and whites would never like the same records how very wrong they were.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/arts/music/25smit.html?ref=arts

And oh yeah, speaking of the New Seekers (as Edd was earlier today, though I know basically nothing about them), here's something I posted on that German 45s Metal Mike Sent Me thread a few days ago:

Daliah Lavi "Wer Hat mein Lied So Zerstort, Ma?"/"Akkordeon" (Polydor West Germany, year unknown) Figured out the title was an Aryanization of "Look What They've Done To My Song, Ma" (always secretly loved that song ever since my secretly emo childhood, though for some reason I keep thinking it's by Melanie or Yvonne Elliman when really it's by the New Seekers) just by reading the sleeve; good for me! And long-haired pensive beauty Daliah schaglerizes it wunderbar; some dark Nico ice-queen cabaret stuff in there, neat. Also deduced that the B-side would somehow involve accordions, but didn't know it would start out like a cross between "Love is Blue" and, well, either "The Windmills Of Your Mind" or "As Tears Go By" I guess. Which is to say...dark! depressive! in the afternoon! yikes! And actually, the accordion is way back in the background, though it's there.

then later:

Daliah Lavi's New Seekers cover thankfully balances its ice-cold Nico schtick with warmer Al Jolson phrasing (if Al Jolson was German and rolled his r's), at least whenever she says "mama." And her accordion song has a palpable...wurlitzeriness? hurdy-gurdiness? caliopiopity? or something to its rhythm. None of which might come from the squeezebox (which doesn't do a whole lot til the song's end.)

There's a also a nice Neko Case interview in the new Oxford American music issue (and while I enjoy reading it, am I the only one who thinks the types of Southern musicians they cover has become a tad predictable). Little of it is online btw.

The New Seekers were an updated version of the kind of groups parodied in A Mighty Wind, except the NS were a hip, '70s version who covered (on the one LP I still own) both Roy Wood's "Tonight" and a Richard Thompson tune! And I think they did a Coke commercial, maybe the one that rips off Jobim's "Waters of March."

I didn't even participate in Himes' Scene poll this year. I guess I didn't even want to think about Taylor Swift, whom I interviewed late last year and whose actual music I find...what's the word? Nugatory? Evanescent? Her devotion to writing I admire and she has a way with words, but the music itself just evaporates, not to mention the "settings" which are so anonymous, lacking in character, as to be positively offensive. She's a case where I definitely think I could take it all better if she were to just play the damned things on just a guitar. But she obviously has an audience that goes beyond 14-year-old girls, and of course, I think Himes states the blindingly obvious when he starts talking about the "suburban" audience for country. That's been happening since Tom T. Hall sent up suburbia in "Harper Valley P.T.A." Who bought all those '80s country records?

There is, btw, a New Orleans version, with James Black on drums, of "Harper Valley" by a singer named Mary Jane Hooper, that is fucking amazing. The guitar player, George Davis I believe, does the best African-American impression of Nashville guitar you could conceive, and Black is always worth hearing no matter what the context.

Still writing about plenty of Euro-country (not to mention Eurodisco, schlager, glam-rock, and what not) over on that other wacky thread I started a couple weeks ago; here's the latest country-leaning tracks I talked about, but honestly, you folks should peruse the thread -- maybe even post on it. (It's getting kinda lonely over there these days.)

PEGGY MARCH "Oklahoma" (Real nice quasi-country sung in German -- so does that mean formerly "Little" Peggy wound up shooting for stardom there once her star faltered in the U.S., as somebody said above that Roger Whitaker did? Not that I know all that much about Peggy March to begin with, beyond her great 1963 #1 "I Will Follow Him" at 15 years old; looks like she had two other, much smaller Top 40 hits later that year, after which her career took a quick nosedive. Really, the main thing I know about her is that Richard Meltzer includes her in a genre called "march rock" in Aesthetics of Rock.)
TRUCKSTOP "Die Frau Mit Dem Gurt" (Took me mere seconds of listening to this fast country talker to realize country-rock Canadians the Road Hammers did it as "Girl On A Billboard" on their album last year. But I don't think a "gurt" is a billboard. No idea what the original version is. Or who Truckstop are for that matter, but they sound sehr gut.)

I Have Never Heard Entire Albums By These Bands Who Have Excellent Songs On Late '70s/Early '80s European K-Tel-Style Compilations

So man, this new Flatlanders album (due out late March) starts with a great great great song, possibly the best New Great Depression song anybody has managed yet; its ingenious idea is to flip-flop Woody Guthrie's Dust Bowl ballads, so a guy whose granddad headed out to California from Oklahoma after the crash of '29 is now heading back: "I lost my home when the deal went bust/To the so-called Security and Trust/I ran my life the way they said I should...," and the song's got the dank dusty wind-blown melody and singing to pull it off. "There's refugees from Mexico behind an abandoned Texaco," and they're the same as him. Title is "Homeland Refugee," writing credited to Ely/Hancock/Gilmore on the press bio, and I'm pretty sure that's Joe Ely singing, though I wouldn't bet my 401-K on it.

Problem is, for the most part, the album seems to go really flat and flimsy real quick after that. Never thought Hancock or Gilmore were anything in the way of vocalists, and to be honest it's been so long since I listened to them that I can't tell who's who without a scorecard (New West Records didn't send one). Which one's the guy with the halfway-to-Willie Nelson high voice? Anyway, I feel like there's some decent song in there somewhere that runs off a list of small southwesten cities, but I'm not sure which one it is. "Borderless Love" seemed promising, but comes off pretty heavy-handed to my ears: "There's no need for a wall," ba-dum-bum. "Just About Time," I think it is (also Ely I think) quotes "Brother Can You Spare A Dime" and has some Jew's harp bloiings in it, but still doesn't strike me as especially memorable. I dunno though; maybe more will sink in.

Liked the new album by some Brooklyn alt-country group called the Defibulators more than I thought I would

Not nearly as much as I want to, though. They seem to be trying for the same kind of old-time barn dance craziness that the Woodbox Gang pulled off last year. But while they get an okay swerve going now and then (in "Honey You Had Me Fooled" for instance), and while (except when their girl singer goes straighter alt-country on occasion like in "Wandering Eye") they're not as prissy as say Hot Club Of Cowtown, they still don't come off half wild-haired insane or drunk enough, and they never even hint at the Woodboxers' punchlines or hooks or rhythm section with all those incidental gypsy extras tossed in. (Still, not bad for Brooklynites.)

Tom Lane, "Country Gets The Pazz & Jop Shaft"

http://tomlanesblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/country-gets-pazz-and-jop-shaft.html

(Lane contradicts himself all over the place in that short post -- does country get shafted every year, or doesn't it? -- and "a year that produced 2 of the year's best Country albums" is a pretty goofy phrase, but thought I'd post the link regardless.)

Seven favorite songs on that Chris Gaffney tribute album on Yep Roc, in approximate order (not necessarily what I would have predicted):

1. Dave Alvin "Artesia"
2. Tom Russell "If Daddy Don't Sing Danny Boy"
3. Alejandro Escovedo "1968"
4. James McMurtry "Fight (Tonight's The Night)"
5. Chris Gaffney "Guitars Of My Dead Friends"
6. The Iguanas "Get Off My Back Lucy"
7. Joe Ely "Lift Your Leg"

Still wish Escovedo, McMurtry, and especially the totally blank Iguanas guy could convey more character with their singing, though. (Iguanas sort of make up for it with good Tex-Mex-organ bouncing and lyrics about a nagging wife.)

Dullest songs are sung (though actually not much sung at all) by Calexico, Robbie Fulks, Jim Lauderdale, John Doe, and -- hate to say it, but -- Dan Penn (not necessarily in that order).

Not familiar with the Haciendas song Tom Russell covered and had to check it wasn’t one of his own, sounds so much like something he'd write. Haven’t been able to listen to the Calexico all the way through yet, which is not unusual but I can’t help loving the Freddy Fender. Tributes are so much better when you’ve never heard the songs before.

though countryish schlager songs are all over those '70s comps that I write about on that other thread, is such music still being made now?

Frank may have answered this on that "vintage country disco" thread last year, actually:

Texas Lightning's "No No Never" (Germany's voyage in 2006 to a strange land called Eurovision) is a country song that doesn't disguise its Europop heart.

So there may well be at least 30 years of the stuff (Country-and-Western-German, I've been calling it), which somebody should probably document someday.

there are several country-identified critics missing from the Pazz & Jop ballots--folks like David Cantwell, Bill Friskics-Warren, et al., I don't believe either Barry Mazor or Jewly Hight have ballots either.

Holly Gleason had Lee Ann Womack as her #1 record, and also voted for Rodney Crowell, Allison Moorer, Kenny Chesney and Lady Antebellum. And J.D. Souther, whose record was touted as a master musician's flirtation with jazz in a country context but left me cold.

I swear I never realized until last year that any critics had any use for J.D. Souther at all, but in the past few months his name has come up a few times (elsewhere on this board, too, I believe, plus I found out a record store guy I'm close friends with in Philly is a big fan.) Someday I'll listen to him.

Didn't Holly Gleason also vote for a Michael Stanley album? Yep, just checked ...Just Another Night, tenth-place on her list. That's pretty cool, though the one Stanley album I heard in the past couple years (can't recollect whether it was that one or not) was pretty bleh singer-songwriter fare, I thought; didn't rock like his old Stanley Band LPs George burned me a CD-R comp of a few years back. Don't think it told me anything real interesting about Cleveland either, but maybe I just missed it.

I've never been able to hear the appeal of Rodney Crowell at all -- well, except for this reissue a couple years ago of an old alblum by this pub-rocky side project band called the Cicadas that he did in 1997. Picked up a copy of one of his solo albums -- self-titled one, maybe? -- at Princeton Record Exchange for a couple bucks a couple years ago, and I thought it was total snoozeville, like they guy couldn't write or sing a hook to save his life. But in this morning's Times, cabaret guy Stephen Holden reviewed a Crowell live gig, and mentioned some songs whose subject matter seemed intriguing:

Crowell led off his acoustic set with “The Rise and Fall of Intelligent Design,” a scathingly witty broadside from his newest album, “Sex and Gasoline,” in which he imagines himself as the first female president, then inveighs against the barbarous inhumanity perpetuated in the name of organized religion.

Two wrenching dramatic monologues performed back to back — “I Wish It Would Rain” and “Wandering Boyd,” both from his 2001 album, “The Houston Kid” — explored the bond between twins, one of whom has AIDS. The first was sung from the point of view of the ailing brother, a gay hustler on the streets of Los Angeles; the second by his twin, to whom he returns to live out his final days.

Okay, I'd probably hate the songs, but who knows. Or maybe I'd like them if somebody else sang them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/arts/music/27song.html?n=Top/Reference/Times%20Topics/People/H/Holden,%20Stephen

Edd, I owe you an email; I'm horrible at getting around to personal emails, but yours was totally welcome. Will eventually respond in kind, I promise.

though countryish schlager songs are all over those '70s comps that I write about on that other thread, is such music still being made now?

Frank may have answered this on that "vintage country disco" thread last year, actually

If I did, it was probably by accident, since I've never really known what "schlager" is, except maybe Europop that's a bit more florid and weepy than average Europop and it's not sung in English (and supposedly it draws on some Central and Northern European folk traditions, but damned if I can tell, and I'm listening to a kind of discoish Super Schlager Party Mix and it all seems fairly sing-alongy, and I can imagine Boney M occasionally using these melodies and rhythms, but then I can imagine Boney M occasionally using almost any popular style of melody and rhythm*). And half the time I see the term I confuse it with Schaffel, which doesn't mean the same thing at all but has many letters in common. (Schaffel is European electronic dance of about three years ago that uses triplets as if it were swing or early rock 'n' roll or boogie or r&b or T. Rex and Gary Glitter and Slade, which doesn't really narrow down the def'n and it doesn't sound nearly enough like swing or Slade to my ears. People at Poptimists were griping about Britney's "Womanizer" being a Schaffel rehash, which seems a silly thing to choose to gripe about if you're going to gripe about "Womanizer.")

Anyway, I still see the word "schlager" bandied about, so I'd assume that it's an ongoing style, and country being an ongoing trope on Eurovision, I'll bet some schlagerry combos wear cowboy hats.

*Maybe Big & Rich could revive themselves aesthetically by going schlager.

Which one's the guy with the halfway-to-Willie Nelson high voice? Probably Jimmie Dale Gilmore. He's got a distinctive, slightly warbly, high voice.

country being an ongoing trope on Eurovision

See, there you go again, Frank, answering questions you're not even meaning to answer. Anyway, yeah, I obviously cheated by conflating "Europop" with "schlager" in the earlier question and answer; on that (ahem) neglected K-Tel thread I keep whining about, I've consistently been distinguishing between the two (which each generally seem to be relegated to their own separtate K-Tel-type compilations), or at least I've been distinguishing between them ever since somebody corrected me and I stopped called schlagers "lieders" by mistake. (And right, I'm not sure how exactly one would define schlagers, either, though I've generally been defining it like the compilations -- which admittedly rarely explicitly use the "schlager" word in their titles -- seem to, namely something like "pre-rock style German MOR pop for grownups and maybe rural German children that never died, or at least didn't by the time these comps came out.") But ANYWAY, my point is that I'd been wondering on that thread not only whether the country-schlager is still around, but also whether the country-Europop (best exemplified,as far as I can tell so far, by the '70s band Pussycat and a few stray early Bonnie Tyler songs) is still around, the latter which your Texas Lightning mention seemed to indicate it might be. Which was news to me, as is country being an ongoing Eurovision trope (do you know other examples?), so thanks. (Also, seems to my unschooled ears that those schlagery Northern European florid weepies you speak of are all through Europop, most obviously in the melodies of Abba -- the group who pretty much defined was Europop is -- unless I'm missing something. And if those compilations are any indication, there also seems often to be a fine line between Europop and schlager, at least when chirpy upbeat young female Eurovision contestants are involved.)

Poptimists were griping about Britney's "Womanizer" being a Schaffel rehash

Okay, this is getting way out of the proper bounds of a rolling country thread, but that's just ridiculous -- they were complaining that it's a rehash of some kind of music that lasted all of five months three years ago, and that almost nobody even heard? (Actually, for all I know I do the same thing all the time, too. Or is their point that schaffel -- which I've barely heard myself, and when I did, it um, sounded "kind of shuffly" to me, which is the adjective I give to 99% of the European electronic dance music I hear but don't quite get these days -- was never any good in the first place, and therefore not worth rehashing?) It'd be even sillier than complaining that some new country act was just a rehash of early Big N Rich. (Okay, I did what you did. And I'm guessing B'N'R were more popular than schaffel was. And Trailer Choir, who half-heartedly rehashed early B'N'R last year, were merely okay.)

Actually (okay, here's a less forced way to put this discussion back in the c&w ballpark), how Europop-country was the so-called "pop" album by LeAnn Rimes that came out in Europe but not in the States a couple years ago (and which I shamefully never got around to checking out?) And how much commercial success did it have in Europe, for that matter?

German MOR pop for grownups and maybe rural German children that never died, or at least didn't by the time these comps came out

I meant the style of pop hadn't died by then, not necessarily the children (though I hope for their sake they didn't.)

Also: "...the latter OF which your Texas Lightning mention seemed to indicate it MIGHT."

and: "Abba -- the group who pretty much defined WHAT Europop is"

This (from a press release) sounds potentially interesting, but my blind spots are such that I seriously doubt I could make it through a double gospel CD by anybody, not even Ronnie Milsap (whose 2006 My Life album I liked a lot):

"Up To Zion" is a standout track on Ronnie Milsap's two CD set 'Then Sings My Soul: 24 Favorite Hymns & Gospel Songs' (March 10th, EMI CMG) that brilliantly showcases the legendary musician's more soulful side. When co-producer Rob Galbraith presented the track to Milsap, he instantly fell in love. "'Up to Zion' is up-tempo, kind of reminiscent of some of the old-time black spirituals," Milsap details. "It reminds you of the Mississippi Delta. I have a great connection to that kind of music."

Tom Lane, "Country Gets The Pazz & Jop Shaft"

That's sort of an endorsement, if you look at it another way, much like John Mellencamp on Biography last week talking about how critics were never going to like him until he had so many hit singles they were forced to deal with him. Do the viewers of GAC even know what the Village Voice is? So why should it work vice versa?

Well, look at what happened when Alan Jackson saw his album reviewed in the Village Voice...

Howcum no one mentioned Scott Kempner's solo album here in 2008? Did anyone get it? Seems to me it would have been right in there with the people who liked Alejandro Escovedo, except more Dion-like.

And I missed Dan Baird's team-up thing with Warner Hodges, too.

I heard the Kempner--I heard it as school-of-rock rock, somewhat depressive or at least more depressive than the Escovedo record, which was way too rockist for my taste. but definitely had an East Coast, Dion sorta thing going.

picked up for one dollar Cyndi Thomson's '01 My World, which has a song written with Chuck Prophet (who was Escovedo's collaborator on Real Wild Animal or whatever that one, where AE looked like Lou Reed playing with his joystick circa New Sensations, was, that everyone but me liked), "I'm Gone." Nice, and Cyndi is posing with a basket of apples on the cover and carryin' 'em on the back.

I believe the columnist who picked up the publicist's ball on the Alan-Jackson-can't-understand-big-words tip (when I reviewed his last record as a "Zen sneak-fuck," which I meant as a compliment to the vigor of Alan Jackson hisself), is leaving Nashville's increasingly thing Gannett paper soon. "What in God's name does detumescence mean?!" she asked of one of the words I threw into the pasture on that one, and I can only hope she's never had to find out.

increasingly thin Gannett paper, actually.

saw George Clinton on that John Rich Nashville reality show the other night looking like he didn't know where the fuck he'd just landed.

the Charlie Louvin gospel record was not enjoyable, because Charlie Louvin is old and can't sing any more. I recently saw a movie, one of those cheapo semi-documentaries they made in Nashville in the '60s, that climaxed with a fiddler, Gordon Scott, doing his thing in what looked like the basement of a Holiday Inn. And also Webb Pierce driving around in his car, the one with silver pistols for door handles and so forth, with some other country stars. Charlie Louvin performed, this was after his brother got killed, and he was perfectly fine, not inspired. Who was insanely great was the great Dave Dudley doing "Six Days on the Road," he had a big, knowing, slightly pockmarked face and he could barely sing but he delivered his great song with real panache. Pretty far out, actually. The movie was called something like Music City USA, and caught a moment (1966) where Pickers were the thing in Nashville--mythic, modest old boys who loved tinkering with things like pedal steel guitars (great sequence with Shot Jackson in his pedal-steel shop messing around with) just like Southern boys always liked getting their hands black working on cars.

So what Dion era is Kempner suggesting? Belmonts, "Abraham Martin and John"/"Your Own Backyard," something between? Now I'm curious. (Never heard the record, or heard of it, til now. Ditto the Baird/Hodges.)

So I got some mass email about Neko Case's tour, replied saying I'd love to check out her record, and never heard back. If they send me one, I'll listen, but I really doubt I'll pursue it any further than that. There's got to be some reason that her stuff (and the New Pornographers stuff) has never at all stuck with me, and though part of that may well be because I've never put all that much energy into it from my end, I'd also be surprised if she suddenly grabs me at this point. If that Paste cover story is indication (hey, free magazines always get stuck in my bathroom), she mainly seems to write about...what? Dreams and fairy tales? Not a good sign (even if one the dreams she mentions does involve "getting it on with Steve Earle and Madonna. She told me my hair looked like a wig." What is it about 30something* female singers -- see also Jennifer Nettles -- and Steve Earle anyway? Don't think that one inspired a song, though.) Even worse sign is that the album is said to include "all these amazing musicians like M. Ward, Sarah Harmer, and Lucy Wainwright Roche, plus folks from Calexico, the Sadies and the New Pornographers all coming in." So in other words, it's just indie rock, right? Not to mention indie for growunups? Sounds, uh, "great".

* -- Didn't check their ages; just estimating.

QuantumNoise, I haven't heard Chatham County Line IV--they're back with Stamey? The second album produced by him seemed to choke a little, but the first was great, so this one is too, eh? I'll def have to check it out. I'd like to thing anybody could dig them as a song band, aside from any bluegrass interest (ditto this year's Steeldrivers debut).Here's my take on them, in '06:
http://charlotte.creativeloafing.com/gyrobase/both_sides_of_the_line/content?oid=40857

Hey Dow, I just saw this. Belated thanks for the link! Yeah, the new album was recorded with Stamey, here in Asheville, I believe. I think this new one has some of their best songs to date. And even though I ultimately prefer bluegrass live, I listened to this album with headphones last night, and there's a lot of subtle stuff going on (thanks to the wife for a new pair of Sennheisers). It's really warm, and the picking is well-detailed but never in your face. Stamey did a really good job blending everything without it turning to goop.

as pure singer, Neko Case makes it, and I thought Fox Confessor was a lovely record. she sang about real life a good bit, far as I could hear--unwed mothers, drugs, boredom, death. just an enormous voice. she's almost as good as Caroline Peyton, whose '72 Mock Up invented and discarded freak-folk before it ever got off the ground, and Peyton could sing blues very credibly ("Fishin' Blues" on the video segment of Mock Up and she used to "Built for Comfort" too) and there's some country leanings on her second record, '77's Intuition along with a few demos in which she's up there with thousands of other folkies, except that "Try to Be True" is pure California pop in the vein of Jackie DeShannon and sung far better than DeShannon, Joni Mitchell or even Linda Ronstadt could muster. (I did the liners for both these reissues, and Peyton told me she gave voice pointers to Ronstadt in the early '80s.) Anyway, as expressionist pop these records were prescient, which isn't to say I think they always work.

I dunno, neither Neko's singing nor lyrics have ever hit me as especially direct; always felt there was a distance I just couldn't get past. But like I said, I've never tried that hard. Maybe this time I will.

I feel like we briefly talked about the dearth of Catholic country on the rolling thread last year or the year before; either way, this hits me as interesting choice for a single (from Billboard's new country song chart.) I'm probably the only person who cares at this point, but maybe they can even milk more sales out of Kid's year-and-a-half-old album (which, when it came out, everybody agreed barely seemed to have any "country" on it at all):

57 NEW 1 Blue Jeans And A Rosary, Kid Rock
Kid Rock,R.Cavallo (R.J.Ritchie,M.Young ) Top Dog/Atlantic PROMO SINGLE | CO5 | 57

Dan Baird & Homemade Sin is him, Hodges, Mauro Magellan and another guy from the Yayhoos, probably Keith Christopher. They had two recent albums, both on import. And Baird was apparently on Hodges' solo record.

Billy Powell died, he of the piano intro to Skynyrd's "Freebird."

I like Neko's voice, strong with a lot in it, though on the only alb of hers I've heard in full - her first, I think (have also heard her on New Pornos) - she achieved that lost-in-the-distant-drizzle feel that indie likes and I usually don't. My friend Mara says that later Neko albs are better than earlier. (Actually, I need to explore Mara's taste further, as she's a mighty fan of Dylan, but interestingly she manages to pretty much reverse the canon on the guy, got into him in 1987 - "generally regarded as his worst year" - and, while she's willing to like the '60s records, cares most for the stuff from Planet Waves forward. I think her favorite is Street Legal. She adores his radio show, which one of those satellite stations keeps rebroadcasting, 'cause of the way he seems to be willing to play anything from anytime. She likes his concerts for the way he's willing play any of his stuff in any way, though she was once hearing a concert boot and she identified the year (early '00s, I think) on the basis of "oh, that's the year that they would sing harmony on ______" (some song from Planet Waves, iirc). A recent concert in Aspen had "the worst audience I'd ever witnessed at a Dylan concert" (rich and lethargic, or easily distracted, or something) but she enjoyed it anyway because for the first five songs the band sounded like it was trying to fall down the stairs, which may or may not have made it good music but was worth trying, she said.)(I suppose that if you're in Aspen and not skiing, falling down the stairs is an alternative). (None of this has anything to do with Neko Case except if there's an unexpected pathway that can lead me into Case's music, Mara would be the person likely to have found it.)

xp Fwiw, when I wrote about Kid Rock album for Rhapsody last year (and here before that), "Blue Jeans And A Rosary" sounded to me like it could have been a ballad on the second Faster Pussycat album. (Probably not as good as most of that album, though, and not creative enough in its sappiness.) Still, more evidence that hair metal then = country now.

Speaking of glam-rock: Two listens in (which is all I'm gonna attempt), by far the funniest thing about the new Springsteen album is how the background "doo-doo-doo"s in the opening track "Outlaw Pete" sound exactly like "I Was Made For Loving You" by Kiss, their late '70s disco move which has since been covered by countless gay Euro Hi-NRG acts.

And I guess it says something for the album that I was actually able to make it through twice without pushing reject, but not that much. I think Bruce's voice's is just really shot and coagulated and sodden these days -- but then, I've thought that for almost two decades now, and if the songs actually had some energy to them, I might not mind so much. What I really really really hate is Brendan O'Brien's totally vacant and antiseptic new age bachelor-pad Muzak schmaltz production touches, which I gather are supposed to give the music space and drama, but to me just drain it of any life.

Not that it would have that much to begin with, but at least, sometimes, in the first half of the album, some semblance of Springsteen's old knack for melodies seems to be there, albiet submerged somewhere under O'Brien's bloat -- like, in "My Lucky Day" (didn't he already have a boring album with a name like that?), you can sort of hear the amusement park sound of Born To Run, but it's way out there in the distance, like you're listening across a couple bodies of water and all this wind, which just dampens the effect and makes it all moot.

I like the straightforward lyrics of "Queen of the Supermarket" okay (he's got a crush on the cashier who bags his groceries, like Jonathan Richman at the bank), but then I think of how catchy, say, Kenny Chesney could make it (hasn't he had grocery cashier as heroine songs in the past couple years already?) And there's something vaguely Celtic about the guitars and backup vocals of "What Love Can Do," and "Good Eye," I think it is, tries to get a sorta CCR swamp-blues groove going. But none of it clicks. Springsteen sings a lot of it in this weird detached way that sounds really heavy-handed to me, like he's "interpreting" some old standards somebody else wrote -- putting them on a pedastal or something. Strange since the songs aren't all that good in the first place. (Aren't some or all of these suppposed to be outtakes from his last mediocre album?)

Another thing that kind of amused me is how, in "Tomorrow Never Knows" (which halfway counts as country since it's got green grass growing), his voice sounds so much like tired late-period Mellencamp, who back in the '80s everybody thought of as a Bruce ripoff to begin with. And then toward album's end there's this song called "The Last Carnival" that comes off like a much lamer version of "County Fair," which was probably the most tolerable song from Mellencamp's mostly lame '08 album; I guess circus-as-aging metaphors are a new trend. (Is that a Tom Waits thing?) Then, next and last song ("The Wrestler," alleged "bonus track"), Springsteen mentions a scarecrow!

And oh yeah, not that it necessarily would have salvaged the thing, but I really expected Bruce to be an opportunist and somehow tackle the economy -- layoffs, foreclosures, plants closing, etc. Isn't that part of why he exists? And if not now, when? He practically owned the Reagan era recession. But nope, there's none of that at all.

Jessica Popper once posted this on my livejournal while I was liveblogging last year's Marit Larsen album:

There is a Swedish pop-country artist called Jill Johnson, but she has become more of a typical schlager-pop singer lately as she is a past winner of Melodifestivalen.

I was totally cut off of country last year, will make it my goal to connect into it this year. I've not heard the Jamey Johnson or Carll Hayes or anything. I guess I'll start with Kogan's and Eddy's country critics polls ballots, and any others that get posted here. Countryuniverse.net I usually find great for this stuff as well.

Anyways, re: Neko, I've always loved Furnace Room Lullaby, but the rest of her albums just sound like mediocre indie rock with a slight country twang, to my ears.

Good luck, Greg. There are actually a bunch of year-end country best of lists toward the end of the Rolling Country '08 thread. Also, I noticed these two unusually country-heavy Pazz & Jop ballots:

Randy Lewis

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2008/685482

Bobby Reed

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2008/685428

New Eric Church album on now; lots of really hard-rocking songs, sounds like. (Plenty of ballad mush, too, which might not be bad.) Also one where he seems to be saying Johnny Cash would kick Jason Aldean's ass (though he doesn't mention Aldean by name, just refers to some guy singing about Cash.)

New album by Seattle boogie-rock power trio Too Slim and the Taildraggers, Free Your Mind, due out mid-March -- man, I cut him plenty of slack last year, but I really wish Too Slim sang half as good as he plays guitar. That laid-back grumble of his is sort of distinctive, but really doesn't put any personality across to speak of, and really cuts into the songs' hook quotient -- cuts into them working as songs, period. Album finally kicks in a bit more toward the very close, with one called "This Phone" where some gal never calls him up but then at song's end the phone rings, then with closer "The Light" featuring lady gospel/soul shouter Lauren Evans, but her belting only serves to underline how dang lackadaisical Slim's own vocals have been sounding throughout. Some real nice guitar solos, though.

"Ya sing about Johnny Cash/The Man in Black woulda whipped your ass" -- in a song about "one hit wonders" and "boy bands." "I'll see you again when you're laying in the bargain bin." Plus your usual kiss-the-ass-of-the-past horseshit about how Waylon and Hank wouldn't've done it this way, as if I care. I dunno...nothing new there, I don't think, except the explicit wishing of violence on another country star (and who won't end up in the bargain bin at this point, assuming there still is one?) Also, Aldean's Cash song rocked fairly hard itsownself as I recall. But Church does seem to do better stuff (some of it more rocking than the rest. Also, can't swear there's more rocking stuff this time than last time, but most of what's here sounds good.)

new Flatlanders album ...some decent song in there somewhere that runs off a list of small southwesten cities

Okay, found it -- "After The Storm." I think Gilmore's singing, and I like it. Real good existential homeless hitchhiker-country ballad with very pretty pedal steel. So that makes two songs, at least. "If I'd taken that job in Santa Fe, I never would have lost what I lost today...You're in Baton Rouge, I bet, or maybe Lafeyette, Houston, San Antone, it's all the storm." People tell him the storm has passed, but it's still raging in his mind.

"it's all the same," I meant.

Next song starts with somebody (Hancock I'll guess) standing at the crossroads in the rain, then quoting the Book of Revelations. Beginning sounds a bit too much like Cat Stevens' "Moonshadow" for my tastes. I like the verse about shattered glass all over the floor (and leaving something on the fridge??), but not so much the chorus about wishing for rainbows.

Then "No Way I'll Ever Leave You," somewhere between tejano and zydeco; Gilmore again? Okay, this album is better than I was suggesting above, I guess.(And those southwestern cities in the storm song clearly aren't as small as I thought they were, either.)

Kelly Clarkson's new single, "My Life Would Suck Without You In My Pants With A Butcher Knife," is vaguely countryish at the start in that the melody of the opening couplet is lifted from "Desolation Row" (then the melody of the next couplet is lifted from "You Can't Hurry Love"). Overall, the track is a bit more obvious than one would expect, at least in comparison to the subtle gradations and gentle lyricism of other recent Dr. Luke productions such as "I Kissed A Girl" and "Girlfriend."

Church's Carolina was originally set for Aug. '08, so an additional 8 months to get it out. Wonder what took so long.

wait -- "Desolation Row" had a melody? whoa.

Taylor Swift is selling, as today's New York Times reports:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/31/arts/music/31swif.html?ref=arts

she's affiliated w/ Universal Republic thru Big Machine, who have offices on the Row. Interesting, I recently interviewed Courtney Jaye, a sort of garage-pop-country artist who once had a major-label deal (with Island) and has recorded a new one that includes a duet with Band of Horses' Ben Bridwell. She had cut a deal with Universal Republic to work just one single from her forthcoming, which is gonna be called The Exotic Sounds of Courtney Jaye, as well as shoot a video and work a tour. Apparently this was under the aegis of something called Republic South, and Jaye expressed doubt that the deal was gonna work as well as she or UR/RS might've hoped. Anyway, the Swift piece was interesting and I would guess that Radio Disney had a lot to do with her success, too. The numbers are good but in comparison to what a number-one record was selling 9 years ago, sobering.

x-post on Church's Carolina: It seems like labels are hesitant to release an album these days if they haven't already gotten a single from it into the top ten. Church has already released two or three songs from the new record & I don't think any of them has been a hit yet.

Lots of major label country albums have been pushed back almost into oblivion in the past couple years -- Phil Vassar came out maybe nine months or so after it was supposed to (with a slightly changed track list), and others (Bombshel, Ashley Monroe, Terri Clark) never came out at all, as far as I know. (Wasn't there even some Lee Ann Womack album that was shelved a couple years ago? Or did that one just wind up being reconfigured somehow later?)

Taylor Swift is selling

Well, sort of. Point of the piece seemed to be that, for an album that's topped the Billboard chart for eight weeks, Fearless really hasn't sold all that much (compared to previous albums that have performed similar feats) -- just 2.4 million. Not surprising given industrywide sales downturns, and the fact that nobody much buys music in January anyway. The piece did, though, have Billboard chart honcho Keith Caulfield saying those buying her album aren't just teens, but also "older people, like moms and dads." Which reasserts some claims made upthread.

Not sure I hear the Dylan and Supremes that Frank hears in that Kelly Clarkson song, but I do think the guitar opening has some country or rockabilly in it. I think the song sounds pretty good until Kelly starts yelling at me, and then I'm out the door.