Rolling Country 2006 Thread

The Chicks' albums have always been spotty, impinged by hokiness on one side and gentility on the other. Their leaving country killed the hokiness, and they've found a way to find intensity within their soft rock. This album may be their best. Still, an opportunity feels lost. At this point, there's no way for them to communicate with their detractors, but I wish they'd felt their way into their detractors' innards. "Goodbye Earl," their murder song from two albums back, is about the glee of a liberating killing rather than about the rage and desperation that caused it. Now, being subjected to the rage itself, they could have learned from it, used it to deepen their music.

the todd snider album is the devil you know, and i dont know if its a 90s comp but i foudn east nashville skyline a week ago or so, and i love the raw scraggliness of hsi voice, and his wit...so i dont know to go new or go old wrt him

i liked the dylan article, i still dont get the connection to/love for ashlee, and the general article sort of disappointed me, for its lack of soul, hip hop, etc and its general indie tendecies, but i wonder if we can talk about songwriters if we are talkign about production by comittee...(so anything britney sang from Oops, to Toxic, for example are amongst the best writing of the 90s but are rarely acknowldeged; or sexyback the new justin timberlake song, is an almsot perfect peice of writing in how it fits words into rthyms, but no ones mentioning he writing (or Missy, where was Missy on the list?)

landslide is actually a really good example. the last time i heard it was in a wal mart in central bc, in prince george, picking up film. it should fit into such a place, a lower, softer, cover of a song that was low and soft to begin with. but waiting to buy my goods, i kept listening to it, and its not my favourite dixie chicks song, but it has a intesity of feeling and devotion, a permeant kidn of sadness, that i haev a really hard time talking about. the idea that understantement can be as emotionally/musically evocotive as overstatement is something that i have been thinking al ot about lately, and the dixie chicks embody it perfectly. landslide sounds worn, broken, devoid of content, aird, exhausted in a way that is rare in country.

other examples:
on travelin' soilder, the slight emphasis on vietnam, or the almsot whisper of conversation in the first verse, or how the correspondance is mentioned--think of it in other veitnam songs, like dear john or vietnam by porter wagner--and see what seems like rhetoric, and what seems like a confused narrative, from someone who doesnt know exactlty how they feel...

(also, similar feelings on If I Fall You’re Going Down With Me,Cowboy Take Me Away Ready to Run Tonight The Heartache’s On Me Wide Open Spaces There's Your Trouble I Can Love You Better, etc)

the feeling i think, is taking the domestic, and not feeling good about it, and not feeling bad about it, but feeling profoundly unsettled...

i think that the trouble w. the whole london mess, was that they became settled, and though i like this last album, the sadness has disappeared, andthe fuck you has come, and well they cant do fuck you, they arent good at fuck you.

toby, toby is good at fuck you, but then you cant really imagine him sad (big blue note is a failure for that reason) (and he is the only male country singer right now who isnt perpertually down)

really good paste on dylan, frank.

lambchop: I have a really good one-disc comp my buddy david scott put together for me; beyond that, I find them a one-joke band. I'm all for the bobby womack-isms of their production style combined with that pedal steel, and in theory I like kurt wagner's determination to expose his lower-middle-class angst in that diaristic, laconic, evasive fashion; and above all I like the way the records sound. I had a discussion with some Music Critics here about who is really responsible for lambchop's sound; I think it's mark nevers; others think it's wagner; on the evidence of the pre-nevers stuff, the (to my ears) amazing sound nevers gets on lone official and other bands, it's obviously nevers. in other words, this is insular formalism of the kind that nashville never grows out of. and that's why I like lone official so much, because they seem more willing to enter into the world, and don't seem resentful toward the bigger world of pop music, and I find them generous in spirit, as don says, "amelia earhart" is pretty fine, and while I won't disagree with the many folks who find them (and it) the best pavement record pavement never made, my buddy blair who's a pavement fan, went with me to see them and declared that they have far more musical savvy than pavement. so maybe the clintonian '90s are finally resurfacing in Music City, maybe there's some kind of pocket of optimism in this boomtown. or maybe lone official finds some kind of hope in the compulsive betting, and the beauty of horse racing, that they can't stop writing about.

anthony, i just generally presume you have a higher tolerance for lower-energy singers than i do; that's all...

I summarize this a bit on my MySpace blog, for anyone who's interested and doesn't have the time for an Ashlee search on the teenpop thread.

stars go blue is closest to that low meloncholy of the dixie chix that i was mentioning early

i will end up buying those albums

Well, the language of romanticism saturates pop as well as rock, and as a lot of you know, I think the word "rockist" explains nothing, is just a buzzword, laziness. But Ashlee's romantic questing "I" (as opposed to various blues "I"s), as well as the linking of angry vocals to that quest (anger a ripping away from normality), tends to enter pop music w/ Dylan.

I don't know what you mean by "politics." To notice that pop lyrics mean something is to challenge people who don't notice it, but those people don't show up on ilX a lot (and get their ass handed to them when they do). I suppose there are people here who think that you should listen to rock only in rock ways and should listen to pop only in pop ways, and that pop is supposed to be "artificial" and "superficial" and should be celebrated as such. But I don't know if there's a particular politics involved in telling these people that their head is up their ass.

Ashlee tends towards reconciliation rather than counterculture (even if her videos show revelers partying beyond cop control), which makes her a "political" challenge to those who insist that it's the job of rock to unsettle the status quo. Conversely, if she fails to reconcile, this may end up being more of a genuine critique of the mainstream (though not intended as such) than the bohemian posturing that aspires to such a critique. But it doesn't have to be such a critique to be great rock.

"I was trapped inside someone else's life and always second best" is as eloquent a description of oppression as one could wish for, but Ashlee doesn't portray it as oppression but rather just the condition of her childhood, a condition that it's her own responsiblity to abandon (the reward being that she gets to re-approach her family as an equal, and therefore gets to love them, finally). Whereas Dylan in his early work would only write equivalent lyrics - "she never sat once at the head of the table" - about someone else's being oppressed. It wasn't until his mid twenties that Dylan gave us anything that might actually be the conditions of his own childhood ("look out, kid, you're gonna get hit," "don't wanna be a bum, you'd better chew gum," etc.). Think of Dylan being like Ashlee rather than vice versa. Dylan the brat, the glamworder. Not Dylan the celebrated "poet."

Anthony, you're not being insulting, but the problem is that you're not saying anything. E.g., if you don't think that, as I claim, Ashlee's using anger cadences in the chorus of "Shadow" that were brought to pop music in the mid '60s by Jagger and Dylan, then just what is it that you think she's doing instead in that chorus? Or if you don't see any resemblance between "I was trapped inside someone else's life" and "she never sat once at the head of the table," then what do you see? If you don't think when Ashlee says she'll walk a million miles to find out what this shit means that she's declaring a romantic and moral quest, then what do you think she's declaring?

Maybe there's an incipient politics in Ashlee's being a glamour puss rather than being a ragged troubadour or a good little punkette, and being a rocker in pop clothing.

You could say that, like Ashlee and Dylan and Elvis, I don't know my place; which is to say that rather than merely serve music or critique it, I use my writing to participate in the music and compete with it, to preen and dazzle and sing. And that's a long-running power struggle too, so you can call it "politics" if you want to, the war between writing and journalism.

Blount, you're an idiot.

My thoughts on the last Chicks album influences my opinion of this one - or at least my execution in explaining my opinion. The best song of the last album - bar none - was 'A Home' (second, 'Traveling Soldier'). At the time I had been reading "Set This House in Order" about MPD. At the heart of the novel, and at the heart of the Chick's song (and the reason the two became linked for me) was a soft plot that distracts from the essential tension. In "Set This House in Order" the distraction comes from the humor - the pow is the disaster at the heart of the novel (abuse, mental disease). In 'A Home', the distraction is this classic country theme: You left me, we broke up, I was wrong, so sad. The pow is the chorus: "Not a night goes by I don't dream of wandering, through the home that might have been." The tension in 'A Home' isn't the breakup, but rather the potential of what might have been. There's an apocolyptic emptiness that the Chick's are playing towards in the song. It isn't sad because of the now, but rather because of the future. They are living into the pain that they are singing about in the now. The oddness (and shocking-rawness) of this is that every time the song is played is the now. It never becomes the future of discontent and pain, so the pain is never eased. They are constantly staring into an empty future.

Come to 'Easy Silence' which is essentially about being protected from the world. "The way you keep the world at bay for me." The trade-off between the Chorus and Verse is similiar to the one in 'A Home.' The verse seems to be about the reactions to the Chicks, or the war, etc. The Chorus though ignores those facts. It embraces a peaceful quiet and easy silence. The tension is the album-burnings, Bush, the war, the media, etc. The pow is that they just want the Easy Silence that the song promises. Ironically, because the song isn't silent - the tone is soft, but it isn't quiet. There is a lot of noise going on behind the pretense that the Chicks are embracing.

On the Teenpop thread I argued about the merits of Lily Allen's Smile over LDN because of the authenticity of Smile over the implied sincerity of LDN. Here I'd argue the same thing. Frank said in the recent voice that he wants to see the Chicks express their anger, but I want to the argue the opposite. Easy Silence is a better song than Not Ready to Make Nice because it's a more subtle mission statement that clobbers the listener from behind. Are they saying that they want to be taken care of? That they don't want to have to deal with the world? It flies in the face of the Chick's presented image: That they are tough and will fight. It's gorgeous. So while I'd agree with j, that the Chicks didn't make their Sgt. Pepper's, I'd argue that they got closer to it. That by *not* embracing the politicization of the Bush-fiasco, and not pandering to rock critics, they made a beautiful album (Lullaby, Silent House, Voice Inside My Head, I Hope).

I'm sure I'll refine this later,, but this is where I stand right now with the Chicks: They are best when they *aren't* being self-conscious and *aren't* addressing their issues. They have a subtle vulnerability that comes through with this album more than the last one, because they have been hurt by more. I just hope they are able to eradicate any attempts to be mainstream, and that their country audiences appreciate that the Chicks are *exactly* what the audiences have been saying their aren't. (And j is also right that they need more humor.)

this is going to get me in shit, but im going to say it anyways.

i think that ashlee strings angst ridden teenage cliches that sound good. the i that you talk about a romantic, i see as the solipism of a bored teenager. there are places where i like her voice, but she hasnt figured out how to use it yet, and often it grates.

the bored teenage stuff comes thru in dylan. the gum/bum line is an example of it, but why is that good writing?

and the glam thing to, the sunglasses in teh back of the limosuine and all of that nonesense, but at least dylan was destructive--he built up and tore down, and built up again. but then so did cher. (with the nose job maybe ashlee is the new cher) (and cher declared a quest too--which pop star/musical artist/mtv wunderkid hasnt decalred some kind of desire for indpendence and desire for ones own autonomy?)

reconcilltion is a really interesting word, because i find ashlee intergrative to the whole late capital excess, the mtv culture.

all of that working against, rebellion that you seem to find in ashlee, maybe i find in britney, who i think is a better performer, writer, actor, musician, star then ashlee will ever be, and who burnt out after 4 albums and 10 singles, is a really good example--because i think britney knows what games are being played against her, and she deconstructs them---all of that romanticism that you give to ashlee i find in britney.

britney knew her body, her history, her lyrics, and that supercompact, hyper aware, romantic ambiguity, one claims for ashlee, i see in her.

if you want a line that matches "I was trapped inside someone else's life and always second best" which i think i wrote in my poetry notebooks at 16, then look at lucky:

Lost in an image, in a dream
But there's no one there to wake her up
And the world is spinning, and she keeps on winning
But tell me what happens when it stops?

which is more bowie then dylan, sure but then bowie is a better songwriter?

(i am not sure i am saying anything here, again, let me try again: dylan knows his place, and has spent the last 30 years fucking with us, cause hes a legend, adn he can do that; elvis was an artifact of colnel tom; ashlee is in an opedial fury with joe, something that remains unacknowledged;and we give pop starts 5 years, instead of 40...)

where do you think ashlee will be in 20 years? in 5?
is this kevin federline, cheetos and meth schitck that ms spears is doign right now the motorcycle crash

Ashlee singing lines that you wrote in your notebook at age 16 seems pretty good. Also, singing teen angst clichés isn't incompatible with being connected to Dylan. The reason I wrote "You're not saying anything" above is that you were just repeating variations on "I don't see the connection between Ashlee and Dylan" and "I don't get what the big deal is about Dylan." Whereas if we're to engage intellectually you should be heading more towards, "This is how Frank connects Ashlee to Dylan, but I would map things differently, for instance..." and "this is the story Frank tells about Dylan, but I come up with different stories from those same songs, for instance..." Which you're starting to do now. Obviously, understanding why I see things the way I do doesn't require that you agree with my way. But there's no virtue in failing to understand.

No I didn't. The person who wrote the subhed did, maybe, but I didn't. I didn't express an opinion on the matter. I personally think the Chicks do anger well, but everything - anger, loss, peacefulness - would be better if they thought deeper and harder, which is what I was really calling for. More and better thought. By cutting deeper I meant understanding further.

can you talk a bit about ashlee, dylan, joe, mtv, and columbia?

(2) Don't know much about Joe, actually, and would take the discussion to the teenpop thread if I did, though it's interesting that Joe helps to promote a song that takes him to task (first line of "Shadow" is, "I was six years old when my parents went away"). But conflict with manager/dad isn't part of the Ashlee Legend in the way that conflict with record company is part of the Pink Legend - she sang a song about it - and the Shakira Legend and in a very minor way the Dylan Legend.

(3) Obv. Ashlee isn't the innovator that Dylan or Elvis was. Modern teenpop doesn't totally match up with previous teenpop, and there are musical changes going on, but incremental ones coming from a whole bunch of artists. You might say the same with the pop/adult contemporary that the Chicks are now part of; there are some things that mark the new Chicks album as an '00s album, even if a lot of it obviously draws on the '70s.

(4) As for the quietness issue, what you're trying to say reminds me of what I'd say about "Rhiannon" and "Dream" and Coney Island Baby, which I considered not "soft rock" but "quiet hard rock." Not sure I don't think some of the Chicks is soft rock and folkie restraint, but I do think I get the point you're making. "Quiet" and "seething" aren't incompatible.

seems like oprah is a big influence on country right now; celeb-fucking is everywhere and i don't see country as immune from that, it's in fact a species of it, and that's how crafy a guy like chesney is, he gets critics to write about him as some sort of new boho that ain't a boho and he's just another celebrity, albeit one with a very expensive hat on. ditto the chix: i mean come on, are they really that worthy of any big consideration beyond the sociological? there are values in that music, and i suppose they have their "experimental" tendencies just like the beatles, but they always seemed manufactured, three mannequins of varying femaleness who *actually play the banjo* and all that, and are droll about being dixie chix who know all too well the limits of both dixie- and chix-dom. just like madonna or any pomo star, sure there's some good music, but mainly it's just the name itself and the fact that there's some supposed oppositional, female-empowerment shtick happening and you know what happens when you're a woman and buck the system. your fans desert you, and the ones who bought into the opposition the most heavily continue to support the group no matter what--there's "feeling" there because it's country, where with madonna, it's about pure wealth and power making its own rules, and in the case of the beatles, there's a dazed, awed consensus that "this band is the best because they dared to be themselves and they keep changing, endlessly mutating, from 'she loves you' to tim leary and 'tomorrow never knows' in a mere three years! art!" but as someone said above, country is about feeling and humility, something madonna isn't famous for and something the beatles floated above, and something a group like the chix are bored with, just like they're probably too bored and too arrogant to bother with the "hooks" that james doesn't find on the new record.

i saw the chix live last week, and was wondering if their style change is or is perceived to be a necessary response to the growth of their fanbase. tim mcgraw and faith hill were already making arena-ready rock and pop, but the chix' bluegrass-based sound is more delicate and unfortunately can get drowned out in madison square garden. it's still what draws me to them, but i also learned to get off on their sound when it got girly-skynyrd (though not girly-eagles, or unreconstructed fleetwood mac, sorry, tho the fleetwood mac stuff is admittedly catchy). the problem is that persona-wise, the non-natalie girls are a bit too prim (and the show too tightly professional), and they can't be skynyrd if their music doesn't move more (and their backing guitars were really muddy). maybe it would have worked better outside with a big sky.

and yeah, the we're-so-brave-we-hate-bush is pretty facile, and annoying more than twice, but in NYC* at least it got a huge response several times over, and i had to laugh in the encore when they girly-snarled a "stayed in Mississippi way too long" cover.

so are either of the last two albums worth buying?

*where the guy in front of me was wearing a white belt, and the Chesney-costumed guy a few rows down might have been gay. interesting crowd generally - heavily female, obv, lots of dates, lots of moms and pretty young kids, all races represented. is this what a Madonna show is like?

As far as the Dylan v. Ashley thing: I was listening to Dylan at Folksinger's Choice in 1962 - which I think Frank would say is still apart of Dylan's teen-pop era (though I always imagine teen-pop Dylan is Blood on Blood, etc). And what makes the bootleg incredible is, of course, the conversation in between the songs. Where Dylan is feeling around, trying to sense his place in music. His songs aren't "folk songs," they're "contemporary songs."

(nervous giggle in conversation after playing Emmitt Till - Interviewer: Have you sang that for Woody Guthrie? Dylan: Nah, I'm gonna sing it for him.)

There's this figuring out that is going on. I think my problem with Ashley Simpson is that she doesn't have the same emptiness of form that she's working into. The stardom she's trying for has already been mapped out - either by Dylan, or by Madonna, or by her older sister. I don't think you can discount the novel, or the new. Even if Simpson can completely recreate Dylan's ballads, or join him in the Romantic tradition, at best she'll only be the second person to have done so.