Rolling country 2007 thread

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erm, they might have used the term "psychedelic" too.

― don (dow), Saturday, 3 February 2007 19:12 (nineteen years ago)

what gives down south lucinda
this time your guitar playing
is more grooveful fun, or what?

― edd s hurt (ddduncan), Saturday, 3 February 2007 19:32 (nineteen years ago)

and even in '68, Malone's great Country Music U.S.A. says Cash is coming on "like a Method actor" with the Hamlet-in-tailored-black bit (did Malone know June had taken Actors Studio classes, worked with Brando and stuff?). Mainly, Malone's amused and bemused: why would Cash feel the need to push the Americana bit so hard, as if he *didn't* have his actual hard-scrabble background and actual talent,and was overcompensating? But the shock of coming out of that background, where the main thing was just to hang on to another year, like with Elvis, the shock of that, of willing yourself so far into the public eye, etc., surely has a lot to do with it. There's a new bio which reportedly peels the mythopoeic onion a bit.

― don (dow), Saturday, 3 February 2007 19:33 (nineteen years ago)

wait, wait, june did actors studios classes?

― pinkmoose (jacklove), Saturday, 3 February 2007 19:38 (nineteen years ago)

Yeah, she talks about it in her books and in some of her songs. Seh met Elia Kazan in when he was in Tennessee Valley, researching for the movie about TVA flooding a valley to build a dam (The River? Been several of that title; anyway with Marilyn Monroe and Montgomery Clift). And he introduced her to Lee Strasberg, etc. She appeared in some movies and TV (live drama was big on TV back then), but music was still her default bread & butter, cos the audience knew her from all those years touring with her mother and sisters, but she'd done comic characters a lot in the stageact, felt insecure about her quirky singing,understandably so. Real intresting writer, though (books and songs).one last, Anthony: coming from the other side, some of Coe's early 70s stuff spills into acid-folkipolitan, at least in this thing I still haven't posted on thefreelancementalists yet.

― don (dow), Saturday, 3 February 2007 19:46 (nineteen years ago)

Gary Allan's "A Feelin' Like That" is streamed on his MySpace page. A nice little stomp.

― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Monday, 5 February 2007 00:05 (nineteen years ago)

I'm 28 minutes into the Travis Tritt best-of, and I've finally heard a song I like, "Tell Me I Was Dreaming." The one after it, "Drift Off To Dream," is more typical. Intense in its sweetness in the verse, it drifts off into negligible niceness in the chorus. Not bad, but not making me sit up, either. In general, I've nothing against a guy with a kick-ass demeanor going sweet, but I'm not hearing enough good songs. Maybe his hits aren't his best songs. "Too Far To Turn Around" from a couple of years ago is still a total scorcher of pain; I seriously think it may be the best country track of the decade.

("T.R.O.U.B.L.E." is playing now; a good solid Jerry Lee-style rocker; it's one I've heard before, of course.)

― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Monday, 5 February 2007 00:31 (nineteen years ago)

And I'm liking "Lord Have Mercy On The Working Man," which is neither sweet nor kickass, just a regular old honky-polka or whatever-you-call-it, too offhand to be weepy, nicely pissy, but leaving space for funny sing-along rah-rah and bright little swing solos.

― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Monday, 5 February 2007 00:41 (nineteen years ago)

one the best time ive ever had in a bar, was at this rigpig palace in white court on a sat. nite, when the boys in the overalls were singing Lord Have Mercy like they were in church...the audience participation makes tritt worthwhile i think.

whats the new watson called, and where is it being released?

― pinkmoose (jacklove), Monday, 5 February 2007 00:43 (nineteen years ago)

Played Joanna Newsom's Ys in the background while making lunch. Was expecting something more austere and commanding. Forgot that she's sometimes labeled "Freak Folk." Anyway, she goes neither for groove nor for song-type climax and closure, which I guess leaves storytelling, which I didn't catch since I wasn't listening to the words. I'm not falling instantly in love with the grain of her voice (or the lack of grain); but then, you wouldn't expect me to. The only thing I want to say about the alb as of now is that one of the melodies on the first track - she alternates several melodies - originally struck me as "generic" singer-songwriter folk, but not in a bad way; but then I realized it wasn't generic so much as familiar - in fact was almost identical to Nelly Furtado's "All Good Things (Come To An End)," the one Furtado wrote with Chris Martin of Coldplay. And it's by far the thing I like most (so far) on the Newsom album, but not nearly the thing I like most on the Furtado album. If Joanna's lyrics are as ridiculous as Furtado's "All Good Things (Come To An End)" I will be shocked. And it isn't as if I'm not expecting Newsom's lyrics to be ridiculous.

― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Monday, 5 February 2007 01:00 (nineteen years ago)

Anthony, see Roy up above re Watson (where I gave its title, too):

new album, From the Cradle to the Grave, comes out at the end of April on Hyena.

― xhuxk (xhuck), Monday, 5 February 2007 01:09 (nineteen years ago)

newsom's arrangement by van dyke park is wonderful, and she is an ace harp player, and it would be my album of the year if it wasnt for her voice, which grates

― pinkmoose (jacklove), Monday, 5 February 2007 01:12 (nineteen years ago)

re acid folk's connection to country, I don't use the latter term in my forthcoming piece about Drakkar Sauna, which will soon be on PaperThinWalls, but they got the preoccupations I associate with the country state of mind, they reference their shrink and sing like the Everly Brothers sometimes.

This was my failed pitch to review Drakkar Sauna for Paper Thin Walls. First line probably has to do with Chris claiming that Drakkar Sauna are S&G meet Dirty Projectors or something:

I've not met the Dirty Projectors myself, and I'm not hearing any Simon & Garfunkel (Drakkar Sauna's close harmonies have more to do with old-timey country), but I am grinning a lot at this. Only one track from the current alb is streamed anywhere I can find (the delicately understated "Mongrel Of A Halfman Slave Bitch") but lots are streamed from the past, and what I'm hearing is a duo that likes to come off like clowns while inserting deep gorgeousness in the harmonies (Big & Rich without funk, maybe, though Drakkar Sauna existed before there was a Big & Rich). And the accordion (if that's what it is) is a ha-ha-ha type instrument these days, but again works its way into gorgeousness. Sometimes the voices throw a lot of hurrah in your face, sometimes they seem offhand in a Hoagy Carmichael or Slim Harpo way, sometimes they seem offhand in a glam way (I hadn't realized until this second that glam has offhand tendencies, but now I'm recalling Ray Davies camping things up while simultaneously putting a sinister or angry detachment in his voice).

― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Monday, 5 February 2007 01:31 (nineteen years ago)

Freakytigger asks, over on his livejournal:

To what extent is the Grand Ole Opry still a centre of mainstream country music? Is it a primary motor, a big influence, a fond bit of nostalgia, a complete irrelevance, what?

― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Monday, 5 February 2007 01:49 (nineteen years ago)

stonewall jackson is suing the opry for age discrimination, and in my last couple of years of watching the opry, it has gone from a fond bit of nostalgia to a place for professional nostalgists to something else, not quite a motor, but they are working for realvence (ie from crystal gale to brad paisley to dierks bentley)

― pinkmoose (jacklove), Monday, 5 February 2007 03:04 (nineteen years ago)

Great description of the Sauna, Frank. I think the Simon & Garfunkel thing might come in re sly boys strumming: I was walking along, thinking about DS today, and realized I was subvocalizing, "We'd like to know a little bit about you for our files," although they already do, of course, they just want to compare it with your version.

― don (dow), Monday, 5 February 2007 04:43 (nineteen years ago)

I'm 28 minutes into the Travis Tritt best-of, and I've finally heard a song I like, "Tell Me I Was Dreaming." The one after it, "Drift Off To Dream," is more typical...("T.R.O.U.B.L.E." is playing now

Sounds like you started listening to the album toward the end, around the two-thirds or three-quarters mark, maybe. For whatever it's worth, the better songs on Tritt's best-of do tend to be front-loaded, at least on my advance copy; of 20 tracks total, I could definitely live without everything after track #12, though I'll concede "T.R.O.U.B.L.E."'s relative quasi-rockabilly vigor (and did upthread already). So I agree -- for such an apparent Nashville presence, and somebody who obviously shares certain affinities with a kind of blue-collar Southern rock I'm generally quite open to, the guy really does seem to have a dearth of decent hits. I've listened to a couple of his albums over the years, and don't hearing much better stuff on those, though it's been a while and I could be wrong. Kandia Crazy Horse Pazz&Jopped one album by him a couple years ago, as I recall, but I don't think I ever heard that one.

― xhuxk (xhuck), Monday, 5 February 2007 13:02 (nineteen years ago)

...don't remember hearing much better stuff...

― xhuxk (xhuck), Monday, 5 February 2007 13:03 (nineteen years ago)

i dunno, tritt was always smarter than he wanted you to let on, but you couldn't help noticing the calculation. i quite like "it's a great day to be alive," the very first song on "the very best of travis tritt." you know, some of y'all were talking about john mellancamp--well, to me, even in the pix of trav in the booklet, he's kinda what mellancamp wanted to be. remember when the big thing with cougar/mellancamp was his use of "rustic" instruments? the opener, to my ears, is unique because it really goes somewhere, great arrangement, and it's so self-consciously rustic in effect. you cain't git away from the goldanged Band, even in nashville.

but yeah, it palls after a while. but i always dug some of these hits, even though travis kind of also looked stupid to me, because you knew how smart this country boy was. "where corn don't grow" is also great. his voice is like randy owen's, but the material is so much better than alabama's, and i hear tritt as pretty "authentic" on "where corn." and fuck, the even better than usually good six-second guitar lick.

far as the opry--the one out northeast of town, where all the gift shops are, and where you can still go see charlie louvin, and go to the midnite jamboree in the theatre next to the ernest tubb record shop out there--and its relevance, well, it's a sign of the times that the old downtown where the ryman sits is now tres hip indeed, and the midnite jamboree and all that out there is, like, the pre-Garth nashville and perceived as such, uh oh. (you can't git away from Garth here, even when the fat fucker's in edmond.)

xps

― edd s hurt (ddduncan), Monday, 5 February 2007 14:55 (nineteen years ago)

Sounds like you started listening to the album toward the end, around the two-thirds or three-quarters mark, maybe.

Well, the odd thing was that the order AOL listed the songs wasn't the order they streamed them, so I don't know where I was.

This week they're streaming Tracy Lawrence.

― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Monday, 5 February 2007 21:45 (nineteen years ago)

i got the tracey lawerence promo from the label, and the new jason meadows, which is coming out in april. the new meadows im kind of excited about, b/c i really liked him on nashville star, but it might be more my dick then my ears.

― pinkmoose (jacklove), Monday, 5 February 2007 22:12 (nineteen years ago)

Tom Breihan on Toby Keith and Miranda Lambert:

http://www.villagevoice.com/blogs/statusainthood/archives/2007/02/live_conservati.php

― xhuxk (xhuck), Tuesday, 6 February 2007 02:34 (nineteen years ago)

nothing new there xhuxk.

― pinkmoose (jacklove), Tuesday, 6 February 2007 06:35 (nineteen years ago)

"new"? it was one of the best music pieces i've read all year, anthony (which is not to say i agree with everything in it.)

― xhuxk (xhuck), Tuesday, 6 February 2007 06:53 (nineteen years ago)

though i just remembered why the jay-z comparison sounded familiar:

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0349,eddy,49129,22.html

― xhuxk (xhuck), Tuesday, 6 February 2007 06:54 (nineteen years ago)

the peice is well written, a nice condensing of common wisdom wrt Keith, but ive read it in Rednecks and Bluenecks, Franks said it, Youve said it, Edd's said it, Don's said it.

(actually its really well written and the jay z riff is kind of awesome)

― pinkmoose (jacklove), Tuesday, 6 February 2007 07:13 (nineteen years ago)

Lambert, a onetime Nashville Star runner-up, has a thin, twangy keen, as perfectly suited for desperate, searching breakup ballads as it is for spunky, self-reliant road-songs...

the weird thing is that i cant keep underwood and lambert in check, and i keep realising that its underwood i am impressed with more than lambert...before he cheats is more violent and disruptive, the details are meaner, then Lambert's Kerosene, though Kerosene does more damage, neither have much twang and i dont think lamberts voice is v. thin...what was the desperate searching breakup ballad here? is there a single im missing?

― pinkmoose (jacklove), Tuesday, 6 February 2007 07:34 (nineteen years ago)

The guys in the horn section (two black, one white: to call them the most integrated country band I've ever seen is to say exactly nothing)

Or to say: "I need to see more country bands."

― Roy Kasten (Roy Kasten), Tuesday, 6 February 2007 08:37 (nineteen years ago)

Roy, I think that's exactly what he's saying.

― Haikunym (Haikunym), Tuesday, 6 February 2007 14:04 (nineteen years ago)

Interesting (but only for roots-likers, Xhuxk might hate this but maybe not, not sure): Martha Scanlan's record The West Was Burning. She's in the Reeltime Travelers (O Brother soundtrack), and she's kind of a folkie sometimes but with an interesting tumbling word-flow thing, other times she sounds like a bit of a gospel-rocker ("Get Right Church" sounds like modern pretty-good Marty Stuart), and she also hoes the hell down at times. Also, Levon Helm and his daughter Amy are her drummers.

Anyway, I like it even though her voice is kind of like a grandma voice at times.

― Haikunym (Haikunym), Tuesday, 6 February 2007 15:10 (nineteen years ago)

I mentioned a new Cash bio, "said to peel the mythopoeic onion a bit": here tis, from Edward Morris's review in Bookpage, may be archived at bookpage.com, but the print edition's free at my library (and I've gotten very tired of reading on a screen when I don't have to):"Michael Striessguth, who has written extensively about Johnny Cash before, essays a final summation of the singer/songwriter's career and personal struggles in in Johnny Cash: The Biography (Da Capo...)As the author points out, Cash had a direct hand in shaping his earlier biographies, from which he emerged as a flawed but larger than life figure who ultimately had gained control of his demons. While clearly a great admirer of Cash and his music, Streissguth nevertheless chips away at the sanitized version of "The Man In Black." In so doing, he makes Cash more human and, thus, his achivements all the more remarkable." Does a ton of interviews, incl. "...numerous record company executives who witnessed and/or contributed to Cash's rise and fall. Of particular relevance...his flinty and love-withholding father, Ray,and his second wife, June Carter, who emerges as both self-sacrificing and self-aggrandizing (yeah, and well worth a Streissguthian investigation too). Obsessed by religion and the desire to live righteously, Cash, nonetheless, was more of a drug addict than he ever admitted, and, says the author, a womanizer even as he publicly trumpeted his love for June. This is the best study of Cash to date." My main intrest would be in any discussion of how this stuff affected JC's music, re shaping and reshaping of persona. As in Bernard Crick's critical bio of Orwell.

― don (dow), Tuesday, 6 February 2007 19:52 (nineteen years ago)

So would it be crazy to fly to Nashville to see Charlie Louvin. He's not going to come to England anytime soon... ARGH! I can find anymore details of his show other than on his website so if anyone can shed any light...

― FACEBRACE (FACEBRACE), Wednesday, 7 February 2007 22:02 (nineteen years ago)

Depends on where you're flying from. I saw Louvin last fall at the AMAs (Edd was there too). I'd never seen him before, so I'm glad I did. But you should know that his voice really is gone, far gone, and while he can still be effective, I found even a 30 minute set somewhat taxing.

― Roy Kasten (Roy Kasten), Wednesday, 7 February 2007 22:16 (nineteen years ago)

*So would it be crazy to fly to Nashville to see Charlie Louvin. He's not going to come to England anytime soon... ARGH! I can find anymore details of his show other than on his website so if anyone can shed any light...*

what show are you talking about? I know Louvin's doing an instore record-release thing on feb. 24 in Nashville, and I'm trying to get more details on what that's gonna be, since I'm set to write it up for the Scene here. I called Charlie but he didn't seem to know, so I'm gonna talk to the guy at his label. (He is doing an extensive tour for his new record--there are dates in Philly and NYC, as far as I know.) As for his voice/flying to N-ville to see him, Roy is right--his voice is kinda, well, old. Not shot totally, but thick. (His new record works, in my estimation, because it's pretty craftily designed to work around his voice--but Charlie has made noises about how the producer went in "after hours" and tinkered with it, took out things and added others. Apparently, the record was waay too Branson-ed out originally, using some of CL's old cronies, like The Banjalist, Derwin Hinson, some of whose work survived the cut.) So it'd be cool to just go to Nashville and see him, but don't expect anything too transcendent. Charlie's 79 years old. Anyway, I should be there at that record-release party on Feb. 24 at Grimey's Records.

― edd s hurt (ddduncan), Wednesday, 7 February 2007 23:01 (nineteen years ago)

I was planning to fly to Nashville in the middle of March to see George Jones at the Ryman and Charlie Louvin play McMinnville, but I went and got a new job and there are things I'll have to do that weekend. I'm a bit gutted. I'd be amazed of Charlie comes to the UK again (I'm assuming he's been before but I don't knbow that for sure).

I flew to the States last year to see Lee Ann Womack and George Jones, and I had the greatest time, it wasn't crazy at all.

Mark Nevers produced the CL LP yes? I undestand he tinkers like crazy. given the opportunity.

― Tim (Tim), Thursday, 8 February 2007 09:51 (nineteen years ago)

Loving The Essential Charlie Rich (two discs, new on Epic/Legacy) this morning, especially "I Washed My Hands in Muddy Water" so far.

Liking the new Elizabeth Cook album okay so far, which was more than I could say for her last one, which struck me as more tepid than its trappings promised, as I recall. This time she covers the Velvet Underground's "Sunday Morning" and it sounds very pretty, and ends with a song called "Always Tomorrow" that takes its chorus melody from the part in Hank Williams's "Honky Tonk Blues" (a song I've never totally loved, to be honest) where he says "lord I got 'em..."

Only got a few songs into the new Norah Jones, the new Rickie Jones, and the Baille from Baille and the Boys CDs last night before I wondered why I was wasting even that much time with them.

Am nearing that point with The Good, The Bad & The Queen, who are sounding more vaguely folky than I expected so far; for some reason I figured they'd be more dub or world-beat or something. They'd be more interesting if they were, probably.

Drakkar Sauna (who sent me three CDs, only one of which I've put into the CD changer so far) are sounding only slightly less vaguely folky so far; in fact, I'd probably be dismissing them as just more interchangeable anti-folk twits if Frank didn't express fondness for their alleged humor and harmonies upthread. So I will try to listen more. So far they seem more precious than funny. Ditto their song titles. But it's not like I've given them much of a chance yet.

Rhino reissue of Warren Zevon's The Envoy is sounding pretty (as in "ain't that pretty at all") good, though both "Looking For The Next Best Thing" and "Jesus Mentioned" are less lively and more boring than I'd remembered. (Rhino also sent Excitable Boy and Stand In The Fire reissues, both of which I expect to rock harder, though I may or may not like them more.)

The new album by Lucinda Williams, whose sound was no doubt instrumental in making it okay for country-oriented lady singers to cover Velvet Underground songs, has not been put on yet. I've been avoiding it. I never liked her all that much even when I liked her okay.(i.e., Car Wheels, the only album by her I've ever kept.)

Okay...Good Bad & Queen's "The Bunting Song" on now. Headline: Brit-Pop Still Sucks. Forget these twerps.

― xhuxk (xhuck), Thursday, 8 February 2007 12:25 (nineteen years ago)

...Rickie LEE Jones, that is. (who this time does no songs about Chuck E. Also I liked her more when she had more saxophones.) (i.e., her debut album, only album by her I've ever cared about.)

― xhuxk (xhuck), Thursday, 8 February 2007 12:28 (nineteen years ago)

don't have time to look it up now, but a Charlie Louvin feat. George Jones track was recently reviewed on http://www.paperthnwalls.com. You can at least stream it, even if the free download has expired.(maybe visible down the front page, or in archive, but not far down, you'll see it on the calender in there) Anthony, if you're still backdelving into acid folk, you might also consider Nirvana's MTV Unplugged, esp. covers of Vaselines, Meat Puppets, Leadbelly, not that Nirvana's own lyrics can't be pretty torturously surreal, esp. in this context, denuded of boom. Also (not so much the country connection, except as country & Leadbelly etc. also concerned with mortality etc), but more as to why any non-specialist might find *some* acid folk (incl. proto- & other predecessors)worth checking out, see my "Barred Bards" in Voice archive.

― don (dow), Thursday, 8 February 2007 20:07 (nineteen years ago)

re charlie louvin's voice: on the new album, he sounds very much like current george jones. old and weathered and creaky, for sure, but it's a nice late-night or early-morning country album. and his old and weathered and creaky voice sounds a lot better than, say, that of his middle-aged and blustery duet partner elvis costello.

― fact checking cuz (fcc), Thursday, 8 February 2007 20:19 (nineteen years ago)

Loving The Essential Charlie Rich (two discs, new on Epic/Legacy) this morning

is that a repackaging of legacy's 2-disc feel like going home? a damn nice overview, that was. my all-time favorite male singer, probably.

― fact checking cuz (fcc), Thursday, 8 February 2007 21:06 (nineteen years ago)

been picking up a lot of charlie rich lately. the smash stuff might just the best he ever did, which is not to say that he wasn't almost always great. (ok, the later sherrill things are kind of cloying, and i for one find his last record, "pictures and paintings," a bit underwhelming. but he was sick, i think.)

what's interesting about that louvin record is how superficially cl and george jones do sound alike. but then you hear just how full jones' voice really is, even on those couple of cameos he does--he might've learned how to sing at least in part from the louvins, but jones far outclasses charlie louvin. it's a far better record than one might've thought. even with costello in there, and i have to admit that elvis sings better now than he used to, but i just basically find his voice annoying, you know?

new incredible stringdusters record "fork in the road" is excellent neo-grass; good songs in there, some they wrote, some they found, and then there's a really lame one (great idea: don't take pictures of landscapes, just remember it real well for your Beloved One; but basically lame in its final form) by john mayer. and they actually seem to halfway mean them. the instrumental stuff has its share of surprises. real listenable for this basic non-fan of bluegrass.

― edd s hurt (ddduncan), Thursday, 8 February 2007 22:22 (nineteen years ago)

i treasure my charlie rich smash compilation (the complete smash sessions) and don't let anyone else near it. and i loathe pictures and paintings, which just sounds wan to me. not sure what you mean by the later sherrill things, but despite the great smash sides and the rocking sun sides, it's the classic billy sherrill hits that i love best about charlie. those are such relaxed, assured, graceful, perfect records.

― fact checking cuz (fcc), Thursday, 8 February 2007 22:56 (nineteen years ago)

Complete Smash Sessions yeah, and the 2-LP collection, Fully Realized (title from Guralnick's evaluation of these 60s sides, as hism most FR up to early 70s; maybe they weren't his absolute best, but in terms of producers, labels, his own inner demonds not fardling delivery, quite a set of milestones)(Guralnick also OTM re "Milky White Way," although it's only on his gospel album, far as I know; the rest of it sounds OK to me, but just a warning) The link for the PTW review (by Jesse Jarnow) of Louvin feat. George Jones rendition of "Must You Throw Dirt In My Face," which you can still stream: http://www.paperthinwalls.con/singlefile/item?id=390
Also, on there today, not country, but of interest re our discussion on here of rare soul etc., in today's PTW, Steve C. reviews Broadneck's "Psychedelic Excursion, " from The Birmingham Soul of Neal Hemphill Vol.1. Sure wish I'd heard of Hemphill's operationwhen I lived in B'ham; obviously., the local tradition of bluecollar visionaries did not end with Arthur Hardrock Gunter. Also, in the Comments, Whiney G. provides more backstory (and of course you can still downlowd as well as stream the track): http://www.paperthiwalls.com/singlefile/item?id=523 (Also today: I review a track by Amnesty, Nate reviews one by Bob and Gene.)

― don (dow), Thursday, 8 February 2007 23:19 (nineteen years ago)

my own inner demonds fardling typing: Hemphill's actual link: http://www.paperthinwalls.com/singlefile/item?id=523

― don (dow), Thursday, 8 February 2007 23:22 (nineteen years ago)

Loving The Essential Charlie Rich (two discs, new on Epic/Legacy) this morning
is that a repackaging of legacy's 2-disc feel like going home?

I dunno. But damn, the thing kills. 36 songs, from "Lonely Weekends" and "Big Boss Man" and "Mohair Sam" to "Behind Closed Doors" and "The Most Beautiful Girl" and beyond. My favorite in the past 15 minutes has probably been "River, Stay Away From My Door," either that or "When Something Is Wrong With My Baby." So far I love it all.

Elizabeth Cook is bugging me. Just too self-consciously retro, in a cloying way. Which I know is not a very coherent criticism. I do get the comparisons of her vocals to Dolly's. But it's a reigned-in, antiseptic version of a Dolly that hasn't existed for 30 years at least. So yeah, she still seems tepid to me. She means well, and she sings sweetly enough, but she'd be much more fun if her production wasn't stuck somewhere back in ancient history. The Dolly I like most was the Dolly that wasn't afraid to disco. So I don't get it.

In Warren Zevon's "The Envoy" (title track), Israel's attacking the Iraqis and Baghdad does whatever she please. Great, rocking song. And the ballad about Jesus and Graceland sounds better than this morning (though I still always prefer Warren drunk and kicking butt.)

― xhuxk (xhuck), Friday, 9 February 2007 02:31 (nineteen years ago)

Er, obviously retro stuck-in-ancient-history production is not bad in and of itself (he says while a real good new stoner-metal CD by Hidden Hand and a pretty good new boogie-rock CD by Dirty Sweet* are also in his CD changer). It's that the particular history Elizabeth chooses either didn't have that much life in it in the first place, or if it did (which is more likely -- Dolly did!), it's been lost somowhere along the way. (But this complaint is ancient itself, duh.)

* -- their tracks that sound like Black Crowes and Jet are okay, but it's the longer, heavier stomps like "Red River" I'm really liking.

― xhuxk (xhuck), Friday, 9 February 2007 02:48 (nineteen years ago)

and speaking of Drakkar Sauna, review & track just now showed up (with somewhut related tracks reviewed by Andy Beta, Jesse Jarnow, Reed Fischer, Marc Masters): http://www.paperthinwalls.com/singlefile/item?id=505

― don (dow), Friday, 9 February 2007 07:51 (nineteen years ago)

the Sherrill Rich records I mean are "Behind Closed Doors" (album) and "Very Special Love Songs," both of which are monstrosities, in my opinion. but then the Epic stuff from earlier in the decade--"Boss Man" and "Fabulous Charlie Rich"--are just great.

the other Rich stuff I got includes "Big Boss Man: The Groove Sessions," '63 to '65, all done at RCA in Nashville. "Are You Still My Baby" kills. And then the Complete Smash Sessions, which includes the insane "Santa Claus' Daughter" and the amazing "Just a Little Bit of Time" and the even more amazing "Blowin' Town." And then I picked up the Koch reissues of "Set Me Free" and "Fabulous."

Sorta on the fence about Cook. Doesn't rock hard enough, and why not do "Lonesome Cowboy Bill" if you wanna do Lou Reed and shock the rubes? It is retro. Dunno, I guess I want to like it more than I do; I really liked it first time I played it, but then I got distracted. In fact, I'm gonna listen to it again this morning.

― edd s hurt (ddduncan), Friday, 9 February 2007 15:59 (nineteen years ago)

I was just coming to the thread to say that I have trouble deciding whether I prefer Rich's Groove Sessions or the Smash sessions, and that on balance I think Groove wins out. The Hi sessions are pretty good too!

I always return to Behind Closed Doors thinking "this time I'll get it", and I never do. I haven't really investigated the post-Behind CLosed Doors stuff.

Except, that last LP he made - "Pictures and Paintings", something like that? - was surprisingly fine also. I love Charlie Rich.

― Tim (Tim), Friday, 9 February 2007 16:35 (nineteen years ago)

i love all of those koch reissues of charlie rich, especially the fabulous charlie rich, which has his masterpiece, "life's little ups and downs." but i must disagree with you, edd, on behind closed doors, which i think is nearly as good. the two big singles, especially "the most beautiful girl," are towering poop moments, and there's lots of other good yacht-rocky and bluesy country going on there ("sunday kind of woman" and "i take it on home," for example). (and yeah, it has its cloying moments, no doubt about that.)

my fave moments on the complete smash sessions are probably the upbeat, garage-rocky "just a little bit of time" and the slow, somewhat complicated "the best years."

― fact checking cuz (fcc), Friday, 9 February 2007 16:46 (nineteen years ago)

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