Rolling country 2007 thread

As for Shanachie, the label's clearly branching out. (They've got '90s r&b stars Silk now, too -- also doing mostly cover songs.)

I see that Kevin has rated Martina's Wild Angels at number 20 on this list, so maybe I should give that one a shot too. Even if his review does contain a completely unnecessary and unwarranted swipe at poor Mariah Carey.

Regarding Up vs. Come On Over, I rated the former higher for a couple of reasons. I thought the sheer scope of the project - the entire conceit of releasing three different versions of the same album - was wildly creative and pulled off very well. More importantly, I thought the songs were stronger and Twain's vocals were the best she's put down on record before or since. I love "You're Still the One" and "You've Got a Way", but I think "Forever and For Always" and "It Only Hurts When I'm Breathing" showcase her singing ability more.

I'm pretty sure I'm in the minority on that one, but I always seem to be on things like that.

As far as the Mariah swipe, maybe it's just me, but there was a stretch there where Mariah's songs were all sounding the same - 'Dreamlover', 'Fantasy', 'Heartbreaker' - and I think Martina's been doing the same thing. "Whatever You Say"="Where Would You Be"="How Far".

Since you're digging the Kim Richey, try to locate her self-titled debut and "Rise", which are both awesome.

Pam Tillis' studio albums are also worth seeking out, and you can usually find them cheap.

Being a star is difficult, being a star and being a housewife is even harder. As for Tim McGraw, I think that you are missing the earnestness, the ability to present some pretty radical ideas in really nice packaging (ie the pro choice ballad red rag top, or the small town ennui anthem drugs or jesus), he has a really interesting voice, smooth and rich, with no real difficulties, which is nice to hear some times (over and over again, with nelly is a really good example of two excellent well constructed voices playing against each other, like we never loved at all is so gloss, and that gloss covers so much pain, and is so ott, camp melodramatic, while still havnig somethnig at stake, that it might as well be dionne warwick or diana ross (though i dont know if you have any truck with either of those artists), and there is also something to be written about the politics of straight masculinity, how vulenrable he can be, and how raw his emotions can be about issues that men are allowed to be vulenrable about (esp fathers). He is also incredibly fuckable , esp in the Cowboy in Me video, the best bit of wankable starmaking appatarus in a v. long time.

In conclusion, etc...I think that Tim Mcgraw has one of the strongest voices today, smooth and strong, with just enough kick; that his desire towards a kind of laconic emotional rawness threads the needle b/w not saying anything and saying too much, that his politics are intriuging in the extreme, that he is allowed to say things that other country artists arent, express doubts that seem verboten in mainstream nashville, and i really want to fuck him.

Frank might be right, in that his ballad might not be country enough for the scene, and i think it hits other buttons than country, but I think that its operatic, florid, emotional bloodletting, is a masterpeice, and used both their voices to prime effect....i dont know who did production there, but it deserves a nod just for that...(the piano in the beginning, and the use of high hats, and then letting her have that first word, with pusing out the word you, and the use of city lights, marking its sheer urbanity as a radical departure---and the line "I'm still living with your goodbyes/and your just going on with your life" is so amusingly passive agressive, and then instead of combating each other on verses, which would make sense, they wrestle with the text, adn each other, its too close, claustrophically close, for that first verse, and then he plays catch up, Tim McGraw working as puncation and accent here, is egoless, or sublimates his ego to his wife, and makes the track much stronger)

thats me defending tim, what do you make?
ase

well you got it already I think Chuck, it's about child abuse, I guess by her (divorced) (one's meth-addicted) (lower-middle-class) parents.
and on j.m. carroll's "anywhere u.s.a," I don't hear any specific reference to what the boys and girls are listening to, beyond "beat-yo." a great piece of pop, better than anything cheap trick could come up with, a really good production and a perfected kind of quasi-rap fast-talkin' jamming those syllables in to show that country singers got their own way of taking care of business quick song, down to the way jmc repeats "talkin' about," just so very accomplished. I like this album more and more, except I guess I hate "alyssa," OK, she is dead and child abuse is terrible. he (carroll) has a nice vocal trick all mock-grave bending down into his baritone range, and he sounds like an average guy enjoying his plot of land out in the new rural suburbia. but no, don't hear a band--I guess there's a list of perfumes for both sexes in this song, I think that's what he's saying in the 2 verses? I do hear "chattanooga to l.a.," substitute jmc's n. carolina (western) to nashville by way of the mythic properties of california perfume, and you might have it. even "love won't let me" doesn't totally suck as a ballad, usually I don't like them, but this one even has a cool key change and I like the guitar figure.

above, someone asked about gary allan. even his first record, the one with his version of a faron young song, is prime, easily as good as anything yoakam did, the same kind of cooled-out california country, played for moderate drama. "smoke rings" is a great one, too. the best one after "tough all over" is "see if I care," I'd say, the most varied, and like all of his records, cooled-out and tough-minded.

xps

Have any of you promo-getting types heard Charlie L's forthcoming LP? Any thoughts?

I highly recommend "You Think You Know Somebody" on the Todd Snider retrospective; won't say anything more about it, since I thought I knew where it was going (sentimental lyrics about a longstanding friendship) and then it completely caught me by surprise, and I had to relisten, this time noticing the hints... However, would be better if Mellencamp or someone like that were singing, since Snider's just not a singer (I mean, he's in tune all right, just isn't able to project much character). But his songs are worth knowing, even when his liberalism is too self-congratulatory, which isn't always.

Not in regard to country: Mariah Carey's Emotions may be my favorite album of the '90s, even though she's not particularly my sensibility.* Delivers hot emotions (and rides some hot beats) while basically heaving her voice across the sky and making no attempt to be responsible to melodies or messages, which manage to come through anyway. (But her best track is the live version of "Can't Let Go" on MTV Unplugged.)

[*Er, at this point, "even though" might be changed to "naturally enough," given that I don't know if there's anyone with my sensibility making great music][whatever I mean by "my sensibility"][and actually Brie Larson and Skye Sweetnam have had a few great moments, and I'd bet they and I have lots in common]

grooving on Ira Louvin's 1965 solo recordings made shortly before his death in an automobile crash. best by far is "empty bottle and a broken heart," just superb, and they let him play mandolin on it, sounds like. some of the other stuff is way gooped up with chorales, but he was a great singer, maybe better than charlie.

There's damned near not a weak track to be found here - though granted, it's way too short at only 2 tracks, with 2 of 'em new. "Born to Boogie" and "All My Rowdy Friends" are genius, almost country-big band fusion (listen to those HORNS on "Boogie"! And this was a huge country hit!) - xhuxk, I'd imagine that these are RIGHT up your alley, am I right? "A Country Boy Can Survive" and "Country State of Mind" are superb odes to, well, country livin' - but they pull it off without coming off as supremely asshat. I mean, even though I'm an El Lay guy now, I was raised on a midwestern farm and I get 'em. And "Women I've Never Had" is practically Louisiana jazz, good God.

I've already put in a bid on his 2000 'Bocephus Box' (the one covering '79-'99) on eBay. I must have MORE! And he kinda invented country-rock as we now know it, didn't he? (Not to mention Kid Rock.)

heres a link to the album, and im TO now, but i will burn you the cd when i get home.(i actually have a cd burner, so people expect mixtapes)

And I just posted this on the rolling metal thread:

I finally heard the Gilby Clarke album from last year (not that I was especially looking forward to listening to it or anything -- it just basically showed up free and unnanounced at work, so I bit.) It's less bad than I expected; as post-sleaze-glam singer-songwriter stuff goes, I'd take it over, say, the new Jesse Malin album (which includes bad Springsteen cameos and a worse Replacements cover). But it still leans too much toward singer-songwriter, not enough toward sleaze-glam to my ears. Seems to improve slightly when it veers slightly toward country rock (i.e. in "Skin N Bones"), but even that just reminds me how much more fun Shooter Jennings makes such stuff.

Great song I'd never heard before on the new Travis Tritt best-of CD (on which I otherwise haven't found much to enjoy yet, including its dime-a-dozen Marty Stuart duet): "Where The Corn Don't Grow." (I still totally approve of "Lord Have Mercy On The Working Man"'s update of Blind Alfred Reed style depression country blues, though.)

New Yolanda Perez album Te Sigo Amando is her most straight banda record, with the least hippity-hoppy parts, and so far seems her dullest album so far. Sounds like a maturity move or something. She was already heading this direction on her previous album, in a way, but this time she seems to have jumped the shark. None of it sounds bad per say, but not a single song has jumped out and got me excited yet either. (As tubas go, I probably prefer "Keep On Coming" on the otherwise generally useless new Ying Yang Twins album, in which the tuba sounds may or may not be made by actual tubas. The rest of the CD is a good argument against marijuana use, though. Or collard green use, as the Ying Yangs are calling it now.)

fantastic song, originally done by waylon jennings (never heard waylon's version, though). and, apropos of all the bluegrass talk, it was also covered by the grascals on their 2005 self-titled debut. travis' version is way better than that one.

For whatever it's worth, the new album by longtime undie-rap bore El-P is called I'll Sleep When You're Dead, I just found out.

Yeah, I like that one too. And "Country Club" is fun, and the power ballad "Anymore" is well-sung at least. So there's enough on the Travis Tritt best-of to hang on to it, I guess. But just barely.

The Basement are Brits trying (their press release says, and you can kind of hear it in their attempt at doing a loose rollicking brothel shamble) a Band/Basement Tapes (press bio says Flying Burrito Brothers too, sure why not) kind of sound. Being Limeys, they have trouble rocking it like (even) the Deadly Snakes did on their (maybe only) good album Ode To Joy a few years ago. Singer isn't awful, but he's not-awful more in a second-tier Auteurs or Only Ones imitator kind of way than a third-tier Dylan imititator kind of way.

Taylor Swift album sounds great. Apparently Frank wasn't fibbing. So far my favorite is the song where she keeps a boy out past curfew.

Montgomery Gentry - Carrying On: I had heard most of the songs on this one through various means, but never all at once together. This is a truly great album, one of the best country albums I've heard. "Cold One Coming On" sounds even better on the album than it does as a single. Stellar.

Gary Allan - Tough All Over: Only listened to it once, so clearly no time to absorb it yet, but on first listen it was, in fact, as good as advertised. Well worth the investment.

I also purchased Sheryl Crow and The Globe Sessions, both by Sheryl Crow, on the basis of the singles. I never thought of her as country at all, but I once saw her listed on a CMT list of "Hottest Female Country Stars" or whatever (she was #4, behind Shania, Faith, and Sara Evans). To be sure, there are definitely some country songs on both of these (e.g. "Mississippi", "Redemption Day"), and they are mostly very good. I'm not sold that "has some country songs"="is a country artist", but whatever. In any event, they are both great albums, especially Sheryl Crow.

Between these four albums, and Emotions, which I also purchased (coincidentally right before Frank was talking about it above), I'm not sure there was a not-at least very good song I heard, though some of the tracks on The Globe Sessions that are definitely not as good as the others.

xp