Rolling Country 2006 Thread

I agree with the anger thing--I mean, who else could put such sweet-and-sour pucker in such a kiss-off as "LubbocK?'--but on compulsive repeated listening, I just keep finding layers of things I wasn't looking for and thereefore am delighted to find.

What I feel nobody has really touched upon is the way, pirposelly or not, the Chicks and/or Rubin are using genre twich juxtaposition to negate genre and so get close to creating something new, but not 'new' in a lookit-my-refs-blend pomo way.

I think "Easy Silence" gets people because, yes, it's pretty as fuck and slow and intimate but it's to overt to be Low. Is it a ballad, folk--what the fuck is this thing? Are the background vocals gospelish or Beatles-ish?

Point is, the elements bounce off each other and reflect and what it is is "Easy Silence", no pun.

You get the same genre juxtaposing/neutering effect in "Silent House", whic chord-wise and even in some instrumental flourishes and harmonies, is an ELO ballad--about Alheimers. By a 'country' trio with a violinist from from Pennsylvania and a multi-string plucker from Massachusetts.

They don't just lift elements like Big & Rich might--they fuse them until the source materials are changed on, er, a genetic level or some other comparison that signifies 'essense'.

So on a sheer musical level, I think the Chicks thought long, hard and smart--and I'm also thinking, open-ear instincs had as much to do with it. OTOH, they are hyper self-aware--Natalie joked in NYC the amusing aspect of writing a song about infertility that has as chorus "it's so HARD with it doesn't COME easy" [her emphasis.]

[Side thought--have people written about how "Goodbye Earl" is not only about two women who kill a scumbag, but move into a house together to live happily ever?]

Anyway, on the newish one, I first thought the words were simply skillfully functional--but more and more they have this incredible elegance and economy. I mean, in four lines--

"And I will try to connect
All the pieces you left
I will carry it on
And let you forget"

--and they cover an arc that starts with tragedy, moves to acceptance and ends in honor and forced letting-go. Like, that's common skill?

What I mean is--well, listen to "So Hard." The intro is out of Procol Harum's "The Devil Came from Kansas." The verse would fit nicely in any song by The Veronicas. Thos chorus--which uses the inflection of the intro--smooshes these two wildly different genre gestures into a new and kind of amazingly gainly shape.

The point is, what I guess I'll cal signifying genre tags are somehow neutralized--and that's really hard to do.

On "Goodbye Earl" they take a basic pop song form and the only thing that makes it 'country' is the addition of banjos and Natalie overplaying the hayseed card with the yelped "black-eyed peas!" stuff. In other words, the signifying tags are seperate and it just makes it another recombination.

But on so much of "Taking..." the tags dissapear, the fusion is seamless, which makes the music itself have this transparent, existing-outside-identifer quality whose lack of genre actually makes the words more powerful, a carrier frequncy or something.

Rubin worked with the approach on the third Cash record, but there the legend was so rish and trenchant it couldn't go all the way in the fusion/transparency thing. But the Chicks are sort or inherently malleable--sound-wise--and so it gets there, and it's a pretty sui generis there.

Just saying that in the spirit of noting how different the Chciks project is. The Katrina Benefit version of "I Hope" even sounds like a dry run for "Taking..." It's faster ("soul/rock"), there's more Eagles semi-rock guitar, the sane sounds like Jeff Lynee produced it.

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0633,cavalieri,74173,22.html

There's pedal steel (or at least steel guitar) on one track!

No Depression still won't let me review it. :(

speaking of botched sonically, "sailover," the new p.f. sloan record done in n-ville by jon tiven, is perhaps the worst-sounding record I've ever heard. the guy reviewing it in ND missed the point when he complained about the vocals: sloan can sing, it's just that the vocals are so poorly recorded and the performances tiven got are so below what sloan's capable of, that it sounds like sloan can't sing. a shame. even buddy miller and tiven's usual cast of guests can't save it from instant oblivion.

i will mail mccoy w/i the next week

love ya'll

also, toby's 'broken bridges' soundtrack is really good. he starts understated, winds up in zz top territory, and i'm real curious about these new southern rock bands flynnville train and poor richar's hound he's got on there. lindsey haun's 'broken' starts out with gloomy 'dream on'/'don't speak'/'don't close your eyes'/(some supertramp song i forget -- 'goodbye stranger,' maybe?) piano.

pat green album starts out good, gets dull in the second half, still a keeper. tony joe white and stoll vaughan CDs don't quite cut it.

country reissue of the year is the bob wills box set, obviously.

thanks don

New Alan Jackson is a bit...Jackson-esque, statesman-esque, canned. However, I do like "Nobody Said It Would Be Easy," rueful and with electric piano and chord changes out of Marshall Tucker and maybe Little Feat and any number of rueful '70s tunes? That descending heartbreak-tug. it works, though it kinda goes flat. And boy, high-quality atmospheric guitar intro to "The Fire Fly's Song" and Alan going on about standing in the young man's boots, "this old man don't run no more." And here's how fucking smart Alan is: I'm all sucked into feeling sorry for the poor lame guy, and yeah, "I don't want you like I used to...I want you more." Quite nice guitar lick in there and again, that slight pop heartbreak shit. Canny.

And, did this Tony Joe White piece that is coming out in American Songwriter, and had fun listening to his Monument shit. "High Sheriff of Calhoun Parish" finds TJ resisting advances of the H.S.'s nubile daughter, but getting his ass kicked again, and I am not kidding, the intro to "Even Trolls Love Rock 'n' Roll" is like the Talking Heads gone funk-African-southern on "Remain in Light." Tony Joe plays a mean guitar.

great, great track. not so sure about the rest of the album (the "bluebird" song seemed good, much of the rest is likeable), but "the fire fly" is really the equal of merle haggard in aging-mode. which seems weird to me -- alan's not all THAT old, is he??

Anyway, I really like Jackson's record in a mild way, and I think he does aging about as well as Haggard. I don't think he sings as distinctively--something isn't *there* with Jackson, is the best way I can put it. But this is a cool pop record, full of somewhat magical touches of chord-progression, mainly, that sneak up on you. Mildly magical, you have to really listen. It seems like Krauss had some kind of strategy akin to what she does when she covers pop songs?

I have this Anne McCue record right here--I need to listen, I guess. I'm still into Tony Joe White--"Mama, Don't Let Your Cowboys Grow Up to Be Babies," with Waylon, from '80. "I Thought I Knew You Well," his most pop moment--his most American Studios-crafted song, sort of like a really good Box Tops record. Better, probably. And the strangest one, "Old Man Willis," where Old Man W. is a crazed redneck--bootlegger? white-slaver?--and ends up *killing* his entire family, in between driving too fast and drinking. (Anybody who wants a burn of this TJW comp, let me know--Tony Joe as Swamp-Monster Pervert.)

here is my review of the dixie chicks:

Dixie Chicks
Taking the Long Way Around
Columbia
2006

I have been listening to this pretty steady, for weeks, at least once a day, and have heard the singles and videos before that, and no opinion has come to dominate my thoughts. There is a lot here, and some listens I am willing to condemn it as pretentiously self absorbed and some listens it’s the album of the year, better than the album of the y ear, best protest album since Free Wheeling Bob Dylan. Obviously it is none of those things, or at least none of those things fully contain the albums difficult significance. Some of he difficulty comes with such lofty thoughts as the role of the artist in times of war, and sometimes I think, its been six years, why can’t these three just get over themselves.

It’s probably more productive to talk about what I love here, at least initially. Academically, I love that there is a major, non indie, non alternative country artist not only talking about the difficulties with the president but with the whole red state culture of viscous misogyny, hatred, and war mongering. There anti-romantic odes against small towns have a refreshing vitriol, the first lines of the first song, talk about how “my friends from high school, married their high school boyfriends, moved into houses, in the same ZIP codes where their parents live. But I could never follow.” That rebel yell of urban and nomadic tendencies is something that country needs to hear.

It also needs to hear Lubbock or Leave it where she rolls quick and angry saying that the bible belt never saved her, refusing the pressure to be a good Christian, and tearing about the hypocrisy of certain American religious practices. It’s the most anti jesus song ive heard with a bluegrass backing, especially when lines like “the secrets you hide behind your southern hospitality on the strip the kids get it, so they can have a real good time come Sunday they can just take their pick from the crucifix skyline…” spit nails.

Aside from the politics, there are moments of profound beauty. Sometimes Maine sings lower and darker then the material calls for and it has the effect of whispering in a din. People are forced to bend over, and listen to what is being said. Though they have been doing this for ages, especially in their cover of Landslide, they have perfected it in Lullaby. When she sings, “How long do you want to be loved? Is forever enough? Is forever enough? “, it gives off the same feeling as Brian Wilson singing “may not always love you/ But long as there are stars above you/ You never need to doubt it/Ill make you so sure about it” . There are other examples: the sharp wail of Silent House, the rueful mourning of Favorite Year, co-written by Sheryl Crow, post cancer and post Lance, the introductory notes of pedal steel, like a heart beat on I Like it, and the sultry, jazz tempos of the last song, I Hope, another about the hypocrisy of the south.

That said, there is much here that cannot be recommended. There is a core of self-righteousness here, a hectoring quality to the lyrics, like they know what is right for America, and the hectoring comes without the humor or self-deprecation or force of other writers who do this. If you are trying to tell the world how to live, whining about it is not the most effective way about it. The first single, Not Ready to Make Nice, claims to be “mad as hell”, but just sounds petulant. It is incredibly self absorbed in places, as well—for example in Easy Silence, an ode to a lover who’s only purpose is to provide refuge for all the mean people who haven’t been very nice to the Chicks. On Everybody Knows, they become paranoid to such a degree, it seems almost clinical, and on So Hard, they talk about how painful it is to be Cassandra’s.

Its been six years since they talked about being ashamed of the president, and in those 6 years, they have been threatened with death, rape, and losing careers. They have had their albums pulled from radio stations bull dozed, and boycotted. They have been slandered in the national press, and been slimed by people who refused their talent. They had to have recorded this album with all of this in mind, and part of me is glad that they replied to their critics with genuine emotion. Being self-absorbed is understandable under the current circumstances, if a little boring in places.

I think being so conflicted about the work in question is a good thing, it refuses easy and simple categorizations, cheap politics and cheaper theatrics. They have broken from the Nashville ghetto, and I’m excited what happens next, and that’s something I cannot say about many bands.

There's a feature by me on Anne McCue in the new ND. She can really play guitar and her songwriting is getting better. The album is too long and not the total breakthrough I was hoping for--but close. Grooves ala TJW or post-blues Fleetwood Mac are ace.

and I agree w/ roy, anthony--what's the nashville "ghetto"? they got too much money to call it a ghetto. plus, they made their bush comments in early '03.

So what do people here think of Chris Knight? Enough Rope sounds like I'd like it okay if a more lively singer was singing, which suggests to me the guy's got Steve Earle disease. (Also, I'm guessing they're both Clash fans, judging from Knight's title.) As is, it's real clunky. Xgau is a fan*. the Am i missing something?

*: http://robertchristgau.com/get_artist.php?id=255&name=Chris+Knight

Enjoying the new Redhill album, which stretches out their EP nicely. And I'm finding more stuff than I expected to like on the new Trace Adkins -- "Ladies Love Country Boys," "I Came Here To Live," and especially "The Stubbon One" have good (if sometimes predictable) specifics in their lyrics, and he sure sings better than Knight does.

i have given it a couple of listens, its slippery, and i dont think ive given it enough space

just thought I'd mention this LP I got: Jerry Reed and Chet Akins, "Me and Jerry," from '70. Covers of shit like "MacArthur Park" and "Wreck of the John B." as well as the really good stuff, Jerry 'n' Chester just hangin' out on some jazzy instrumentals (the whole thang is instrumental, but the covers are weird) like "Stump Water" and "Cannonball Rag." I mean I like the Duhks but this is really world music. Plus, on the cover, Chet is sitting back waiting for Jerry to change the tire on his convertible.

I was very pleased to find a version on a Waylon 2-for-1 I bought cheap the other week. The quality surprised me, I'd never paid much attention to WJ before.

And the "...after all the loves of my life, you'll still be the one" bit is heartbreaking in every version I've heard.

So, I think Alan Jackson's record is just so sly; what it reminds me of, strangely enough, is John Cale's "Paris 1919." The slide guitar and the air of things recollected at a distance; in fact, Cale seemed peripheral to Europe or whatever the fuck he was singing about then, and so does Jackson to the South, somehow. Myth, which puts him into Haggard territory. What I really like about the record are the musical details, the singing is fine but I have to concentrate more to get what his relationship to his wild youth. It's mythical, so when he sings about the devil sitting there with a grin, that registers, sure, but it's the little guitar figure you remember.

The Glen Campbell - Jimmy Webb LP is magnificent, yes, and yes it's art countrypop: JW's writing at its best is this odd mixture of smart and dumb which I find enormously charming. The country is more of a flavour than a foundation stone, but it is there. An interesting point of comparison is "Watermark" the LP Art Garfunkel made arond the same time, using mostly Webb songs. "Watermark" is also a brilliant record, but much more of a yachtpop proposition than the Campbell. It also has the distinction of being extremely easy to find in the £1 bins, always a bonus.

Even close followers of Glen tend to admit that his LPs in the late 70s and early 80s tended to have only the odd gem, and often the gem turned out to be a Jimmy Webb tune: "Highwayman", "Cristiaan, No", marvellous stuff there.

As for Jimmy's solo LPs, their success depends fairly heavily on your ability to acquire the taste for his voice. Probably, your best bet is to get the "Archive" best of (esp the new expanded version with the Live At The Albert Hall CD, which may be UK-only, I'm not sure). It's really well-compiled and covers most of the goodies from the albums.

I dunno, Gary Bennett's record is nice, but it's the singing that drags me a bit. R.S. Field's production is ace, however. I like it fine, wish he'd gotten a bit more down and dirty.

And shit, I never thought I'd say this, but Alan Jackson really made something like a great album, his new one. Or Alison Krauss did. It kinda got stuck in my head and I have to hear the first 5-6 songs daily--"Fire Flys"especially is just ingenious. Operates in the realm of the everyday uncanny or something like that--Alan Jackson don't even have to try but he's trying here to do something he perceives he needs to try to do, and almost not tries and succeeds. "Sometimes less is more," he sings. I'm impressed.