Metalheads Respond to Pistol Annies

heres what i said abt hell on heels on the tracks thread so no one has to load it:

i am at work so i am just kinda grabbing listens when i can but the problem with that pistol annies song is that its a boring by the numbers lifeless plod done by fairly average singers that know all the right twangy country tropes to hit + faux lyrical empowerment through money grabs. its fucking dire.

plz note: yes i do have open ears for country but this is not any good

wow interesting - i love this album to bits but the production is just not something i noticed, in a +ve or -ve sense - it's all about the vocal performances and songwriting and lyrics for me. i've said this elsewhere but it's a particularly resonant recession album imo

m@tt do you remember when ilm fell for Big n Rich (and flooded the 2nd hand market with them shortly after)?

My girlfriend -- a massive country music fiend -- was actually pretty impressed I had that around! And Miranda Lambert for that matter.

I'm surprised as I thought you sold your entire collection.

unless you kept some cds back "to impress the ladies" you old dog you

re: "Housewife's Prayer"

I mean it isn't "Frankie Teardrop": the "setting my house on fire" line is a well-deployed shock tactic to grab the listener but at the same time grows naturally out of the very real frustration that the rest of the song is grounded in. She probably won't burn her house donw (though she may); she just really really wants to

also EZ, jjj: I would give some of the other songs posted itt a listen. "Hell on Heels is cool but it is a little gimmicky maybe...

Also I will add that I worked in a record store in the south (NC) when Dixie Chicks hit it big, and while I could see the appeal, it was just never my thing back then either.

Burning the house down shouldn't sound so depressing -- it should sound scary because it is a scary thought.

I've listened to all you've posted. I like the ballads much more, but can't get over the slickness of the sound.

i like what i've heard of this album. not enough to buy one, but i dug them. i liked big & rich too. the one album anyway. but i can't say i've listened to it since that time. i probably don't have my copy either. but it sounded great back then to me!

i don't think i heard ANY 2011 country. the playlist for the country station here is pretty bad.

I'm surprised as I thought you sold your entire collection.

Wrong on both counts -- the bulk of it was given away to my old radio station, and I have a fair amount remaining, but mostly packed away for convenience. In the case of Big and Rich, I had long since ripped that (and everything else), so.

i cant find the country pop fans listen to metal thread :(

I like some Big & Rich songs.

i don't think i heard ANY 2011 country. the playlist for the country station here is pretty bad.

The one LA country station out here, if suffering from the same sclerotic limitations as any hits-focused station does, has been fairly reasonable these past few months. If anything the locked-in-loop of hair metal/classic rock that defines so much of it has been bemusing to hear; the lyrics and delivery really ARE the sole core differences among so many of the performers.

haha Kerr i totally should do a 'pop fans listen to Windhand' thread

also: Ned otm. Country radio is weird.

lyrically, i thought this song was fun:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCnt-drXsiU&ob=av2e

Burning the house down shouldn't sound so depressing -- it should sound scary because it is a scary thought.

i think it sounds scary - she sounds completely bleak and numbed on it, which fits into the description of the prescription pills she's addicted to (a recurring motif throughout the album)

i love the way the character on most of the songs could be the same woman, but the album swings between ballsy defiance and utter collapsed hopelessness

sounds like hell
country hair metal
*shudders*

i guess thats the music all the blonde girls featured in the audience of 'live' 80s metal videos listen to now.

okay obv Scott there are much better country stations where you live than where I live

George i think the thread should start with metal poll winner Hammers Of Misfortune. I'd love to see what 'ordinary' ilm thinks of stuff like that.
Would love to see lex,tim f etc giving their opinions on metal albums/songs , but it would be silly to do it with extreme stuff.

Pop country is glam metal with pedal steel in place of guitar histrionics. Warrant's "Heaven" is a perfect modern country song.

i think i heard that song i posted on THE RIVER here which is kind of a boomer americana npr-ish station.

yeah I completely agree w EZ; I'm surprised no country superstar has covered "Heaven" yet

also kinda embarrassed at how "Heaven" was like one of my favorite songs when I was 7

Glad to hear THE RIVER soldiers on. It always struck me as somewhere between npr and Paste magazine.

THE RIVER playlist is kinda fun to look at:

http://wrsi.com/pages/8936738.php

Pop country is glam metal with pedal steel in place of guitar histrionics. Warrant's "Heaven" is a perfect modern country song.

Well it's hardly a new observation, Chuck had it pegged two decades back and the introduction on country in the recent essay collection sums up the reasons and the functions why for a certain age group. But obviously it didn't stop there, otherwise there'd be no younger fans! Still it was amusing when my girlfriend agreed on the hair metal front.

says it all really:

Time: 02/02/2012 11:38 AM Artist: They Might Be Giants Title: Ana Ng
Time: 02/02/2012 11:30 AM Artist: Wilco Title: Whole Love
Time: 02/02/2012 11:26 AM Artist: Old 97's Title: Murder (or A Heart Attack)
Time: 02/02/2012 11:22 AM Artist: Bob Marley Title: Get Up Stand Up
Time: 02/02/2012 11:20 AM Artist: J.j. Cale Title: Call Me The Breeze
Time: 02/02/2012 11:12 AM Artist: Dr. Dog Title: That Old Black Hole

It definitely isn't a new phenomenon or an original observation.

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That's a weird playlist

Cool music you can listen to with yr kids?

aw i like the pistol annies album a lot. i know very little about country music, though, so m@tt's observation likely applies to me.

also not a metalhead i probably shouldn't be here, huh

Tangential but interesting note -- in Erin MacLeod's story on Celine Dion ruling Jamaica she also mentions this as a side note:

If you expect Jamaica to be the home of reggae and dancehall, you’d be right, but it’s also home to one of the most committed groups of smooth adult contemporary and country music fans. If there’s one thing that Jamaicans love, it’s darned good singers singing darned good songs. From bad men to rude bwoys to Rastafari to uptown top-ranking folks, Jamaicans are just as, if not more, likely to love Kenny Rogers and Air Supply as they are the Marleys, Buju and Kartel.

I'd love to know more about country in Jamaica, makes perfect sense, really.

i believe this album is classified by the record biz as "down home country" i.e. not exactly old-timey but with more or less traditional instrumentation and more or less traditional chord changes, no matter how glossily produced.

this is a tremendously fun and cathartic record imo. the only track that doesn't really do it for me is "beige", which i want to like but the singing doesn't feel strong enough

i am not a metalhead but i played one in junior high school

you must have heard some of the zillion reggae country covers over the years?

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I never found it odd Toot's covered John Denver. Just kinda made sense in my head.

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yep ok listened to housewifes prayer and i think i might hate it more than hell on heels actually. i can not stand this main singers voice, and the delivery is so mannered, its a total non-starter for me. lyrically edgy shania twain = DNFW. are there songs that are not ploddingly slow that someone can point me at, because thats the other thing - both this and hell on heels just draaaaaag

they really love marty robbins in jamaica. i can appreciate that.

that's my favorite track

xp

oh and another amendment - i forgot the lana del rey track so actually i need to bump hell on heels to third worst track result

you must have heard some of the zillion reggae country covers over the years?

Not as much as I should have, obv!

my favorite country rock cover:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDy7-eq7OGM

"The Hunter's Wife"

http://youtu.be/apBPxoM7o9o

^give this a shot, JJJ! It has a cool honkytonk vibe to it

"takin' pills" is a good uptempo pistol annies song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjAa40YDELs

Okay, that "Midnight Rider" cover is amazing.

idk who's heard miranda lambert's solo stuff in this thread but she's basically the reason people paid attention to pistol annies in the first place - "gunpowder & lead" is so bad-ass

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHGPmbu3QNk

its not very uptempo lex (and thats coming from someone who listens to the slowest doom metal out there)

I have a lot of love for "Gunpowder & Lead"

i think miranda lambert might be the one whose voice jjusten hates :(

Jim reeves is popular in nigeria

on first listen it's pretty good.

Amazingly great interview/round table here

http://www.wonderingsound.com/feature/angaleena-presley-american-middle-class-slate-creek-interview/

This is so so so so so so good.

amazing interview!

Presley: I’m judging the companies and the corporations and the government and the mines and the money and the corruption.

<3

for a while i was worried that they'd be talking to the interviewer but not to each other, i was glad (and impressed!) it became a proper conversation

we've been talking a bit about the album on the country thread - one of the albums of the year for me

I want to love it but it's not impressing me like Monroe's did; it's the arrangements.

foo fighters are trash, glad to see them sideswiped in that piece

Hubbs: What Angaleena shows in that song, I think, is a father and a daughter who are both called out in the chorus as being members of the American middle class. (“I got my education at a school they could afford/ The scholarships went to the rich and the grants went to the poor/ So I stood behind a little downtown bar/ spending money, books and gas/ to be a certified member of the work-too-much/ American middle class.”) He worked in the coal mines, she went to college — albeit in a hardscrabble way — working really hard to put herself through college and, implicitly, going to whatever college she could afford. He would’ve been born into the working class; she came of age in a time when she was called middle class. And we see how they’re both struggling, even though she now has a college degree and got out of the coal mines. The shift of the term is almost illustrated in the narrative of that song.

Presley: I agree with that. And in the chorus of the song, it’s like, “Tear this poor house down/ when you know how to build it back.” The message my parents always gave to me was, “Go out and get better than what we have.” But in reality, what happens is you go out and you get exactly what they have. You’re just the next generation.

that first album is still wondrous

The attitude in the first two thirds of this thread is depressing as hell, I gotta say. I don't know what's corny about three women who harmonize this well singing songs this sharp and sweet.

http://www.rollingstone.com/country/news/miranda-lambert-promises-new-pistol-annies-album-in-2018-w495470

And she might not be moving on exclusively as a solo artist. Pistol Annies — the all-girl trio she formed with two artist friends Ashley Monroe and Angaleena Presley about seven years ago — might become a priority again this year. It’s a collaboration that even now, five years after their second album Annie Up, seems to come so naturally for the three singer-songwriters.

“Literally the other night I had a song that kind of just came out of the air to me, and I sent a verse and a chorus to the girls. And nobody said anything. Not, ‘Hi, how you doing,'” she recalled. “Everybody’s in different directions, which is always why Annies takes a while.

“I sent them half a song, and then within three minutes, I had a whole song. They both sent me a verse back. And I was, ‘And, we’re back.”

Lambert, Monroe and Presley aren’t promising anything specific, but they are planning to use 2018 to get some music written.

“We’re very much in the spirit of the Annies right now,” Lambert said.

http://www.cmt.com/news/1791014/whats-next-miranda-lambert/

https://www.rollingstone.com/country/news/pistol-annies-reunite-on-miranda-lamberts-tour-w517472

press release:

(DALLAS, August 14, 2018) — Angaleena Presley shared the news of her pregnancy from the stage this past Saturday with the help of Pistol Annies band mates, Miranda Lambert and Ashley Monroe.

Lambert invited the Bandwagon Tour’s surprise guests, Presley and Monroe, on stage to perform, but before they dropped a note Miranda said, "Since we're at a hometown show and both of them are married to Texans, we wanted to share some big news with you. See, one of us is drinking, one of us is smoking and one of us is not taking our pill! Holler Annie's having a baby, everybody!"

ayyyy

http://www.npr.org/2018/09/27/652181978/pistol-annies-release-three-new-songs-in-preview-of-new-album-interstate-gospel?utm_campaign=storyshare&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social

extremely good news. hoping to see them here in L.A., need to swipe some tix as soon as they're available.

Good album!

Man, reading the comments above was like visiting a Trumpist's Twitter feed.

New album is pretty good. Who is playing guitar, that dude is killing it.

i like this record a lot

New album is pretty good. Who is playing guitar, that dude is killing it.

― Josh in Chicago,

My first thought on hearing "Sugar Daddy."

Gonna pick this up when the vinyl comes out later this month.

Hell on Heels is so classic. I think it's weird there was a lot of criticism about the album's perceived glossiness and sheen bc it seems to me it would appeal to a lot of people who have issues with mainstream country music. The songs themselves are just a great mix of pensively sad and unabashedly outlaw.

and country music has had gloss and a sheen since the LBJ era

i can understand if people don't like certain production styles that make the music sound brittle or over-compressed but i think a lot of country production (this album included) is very warm and generous to the songs.

and separately, a lot of country music is where you want to turn if you miss hard rock chops from the '70s and '80s.

i feel bad every time this thread pops up
i do not begrudge anyone their enjoyment of this band or their personas or production choices.

it's good that pistol annies are loved by people

imo I think Pistol Annies are a synthesis of all three artists and their styles, though i think for anyone I've ever tried to gateway-drug into this corner of country I recommend Angaleena Presley's solo albums, which are exceptionally good and far more low-key in their production and their eye is cast pretty strictly on small-town issues with a POV from a blue-state type who loves living in her red state.

the new album is kinda rootsy and doesn't really have much of an audible sheen except in that it's really well-recorded and the guitar tones kick ass

(i love sheen) (but also i think this album sounds really cool)