Rolling Country 2009 Thread

He sings toward the end of Gran Torino, too; seem to work effectively in context of the move (which I liked a lot), though I can't imagine wanting to listen to his song outside of said context. Otherwise, he's been working in more jazz in recent years, hasn't he? As for his Westerns, I remember Phil Dellio joking once in Radio On that Clint's "Unforgiven" vs. Metallica's comparably sluggish and interminable "The Unforgiven" would make for a stirring foot race. (Personal favorite Clint movies, fwiw, are probably Tightrope, The Gauntlet, and Escape From Alcatraz. I've always found staying awake through those old Sergio Leone flicks really difficult, though I also get the idea that might sort of be the point.)

the sound effects in the classic Morricone STs are cool, and appropriate. the ST for Once Upon a Time in America is fine, and I guess, Chuck, I'd have to say, try to attend to Once Upon a Time in the West, '69, the best Leone film and a typically good Morricone ST. (It's the one in which Henry Fonda is a villain.) Jason Robards is great in it.

I remember reading Xgau in the '90s Guide, saying something to the effect that Mercury Rev was what happened when rockers allowed as to how they really liked Morricone, in other words, soundtrack-rock isn't good. I see his point but what does that mean, that musicians wanting to expand their palettes are supposed to follow Christgau's taste in what's Appropriate or not? Or that atmospherics don't a good record make? Just seemed like another example of Christgau being kind of narrow, like his weird dislike of salsa or something. That said, I don't much care for Mercury Rev myself, and the Spindrift record works best when it's kinda psych-Nuggets-blooze/Arthur Lee filigree...

speaking of aural textures, I'm struck by how convoluted the new Jason Isbell is, like the end of "Sunstroke" where it gets sticky and then he has to follow it with how the sunlight makes fools of peoples. "I need some things to look forward to," and I like this record but find it depressing. So maybe he needs the textures. The more straightforward songs, like "Good," sound like retreads to me, good songs but the words are kinda buried.

xp Speaking of free records, the mailman has for some reason been bombarding me with new ones by country-folk-blues-pop-alt-AC-whatever ladies for the past week, but I've mostly been too busy playing old CDs and even ancient mix cassettes I come across while packing boxes to keep up with the deluge. That said, and noting that I've barely made it all through any of these paying attention, this is the approximate order I've been liking them so far (very likely to change when I'm able to devote more time):

-- Sarah Borges & The Broken Singles (on Sugar Hill) Like it better than her previous album so far, and yeah, that single (opening track) has a lot of Joan Jett in it, though also some Sheryl Crow I think. (In fact, I hear Sheryl in pretty much all these women.) Second track is vintage-sounding 1979 pub rock new wave, and she does a real good version of "Being With You," probably my favorite latter day (= '80s) Smokey Robinson song (which actually made my top ten singles list the year it came out; only late-Smokey competition would be "Cruisin'" I guess.)

-- Alice Peacock (on Peacock Music/Rocket Science/Adrenaline) From L.A. and records in Nashville, apparently. Two very detailed and catchy songs I love so far -- "Real Life" and "City Of Angels." The latter is built on early Tom Petty type guitars. 15 songs is a ton to get through, though.

-- Ellen Jewell (on Signature Sounds) More toward the Lucinda or Kathleen Edwards direction it seems. Covers "Shakin' All Over" by slowing it down. Probably not a not a good idea -- and there's a good chance she'll wind up boring me -- but we'll see.

-- Jaden South (self-released I think) Two girls, not one. More rock/Heart-oriented, or at least that's what they seem to be trying for in the first song. Far from convinced they'll pull it off, though.

-- Michelle Malone (on SBS/Thirty Tigers.) More white bar band blues-ish. From NYC, iirc. And still more indebted to Sheryl than anyone else, it seems.

Probably won't wind up liking any of these as much as I like the Megan Munroe album that came out in January on Diamond (and which I still haven't gone into any detail here about what I like about it. Hope to someday.) But they all show some potential.

Anyway, bottom line, Borges and Peacock seem to have the poppiest insticts, and Jaden South and Malone seem the stodgiest. Borges and Peacock sounded the best in a rentavan this weekend. (Btw, it will be interesting to see which shades of my tastes change when I'm back to listening to music more while on the road, in Texas. I've missed that in New York.)

Still, right now I've got Bonnie Raitt's reputed 1982 new wave album Green Light on (see, another old CD pulled off the shelf), and she sounds like might have had better pop instincts than any of those new gals, at least when she was covering NRBQ anyway. (And really, how good can your pop instincts be if they're not even as good as Bonnie Raitt's?)

Also got an advance of a new Los Straitjackets album on Yep Roc in the mail; I know Don was a fan of an album (which I never heard) a couple years ago where I guess they covered old East L.A and Mexican-border Latin brown-eyed soul and rock songs, but I mainly know them for their Nacho Libre surf instrumental schtick, which has always struck me as completely pointless (I mean it's not like I've ever listened to Dick Dale or Johnny and the Hurricanes or Chantays albums all the way through, even; surf instrumentals have always just struck me as a cool change of pace at best. And at least those old bands were inventing something.) So I only got through four songs, then gave up. But who knows, maybe some kind of guitar afficianado finds them entertaining.

in other words, soundtrack-rock isn't good...Or that atmospherics don't a good record make?

But uh...It's not. And they don't. Like, 99 percent of the time or so. I mean, occasionally you'll get an Another Green World or something, but really, how often does that happen? (Honestly, I bet Xgau thinks it happens more often than I do! He even wound up giving the crappy '08 Nine Inch Nails album an A-, calling " background music, there waiting when your mind drifts speakerward, just distracting enough to change up your mood in a useful way.") Or maybe we just like different atmospherics.

(Actually, not sure how much I even agree with what I just wrote. I've liked quite a bit of atmospheric/ soundtrack/background rock in the past few years; usually, strangely enough, it falls under the genre heading "metal" -- which for the past decade or two has been better at sounding good in the background than at writing memorable songs. And usually, I miss the songs. So though I like a lot of it, I don't love very much of it. So maybe atmospherics makes for good records, not just great ones.)

Also, I swear I'm not being difficult here, Edd, but I'm not sure why Christgau not liking salsa much is "weird" -- no more than me not getting African music as much as he does is weird, or me not having much use for shoegaze or Brit-pop or twee indie music or any number of other genres is weird, or salsa fans disliking metal is weird. There are some genres I wish he got more (and some genres I wish he got less!), but seems to me his tastes are fairly broad, compared to most people who write about music (not to mention most people who don't.) And of course he wants musicians to make music that appeals to his tastes. Don't you?

Okay, now somebody get us back to country, please.

Though maybe your point is that, for somebody so versed in so many seemingly esoteric and highly rhythmic types of music from around the world, salsa should be a breeze? (If so, I can maybe see that. Though truth be told, I don't listen to a whole lot of salsa myself, either. Maybe even less than Xgau.)

xp Better pop instincts than Bonnie Raitt, to my ears (even if they lacked hits): Robin Lane and the Chartbusters (whose debut album I was just playing).

The best Raitt I've heard are still Give It Up (1972) and Takin' My Time ('73?), mixing very rowdy old New Orleans and other regional r&b covers with fetching folkie ballads and her moody slide and bottleneck guitars (esp. on Chris Smither's groovestential "Love Me Like a Man" and "I Feel the Same," the latter backed by primo Little Feat). And crazy shit that works, like Jackson Browne's long and winding "Under The Falling Sky," with congas and Paul Butterfield's harmonica galloping between starry-eyed freefall choruses. And I think Smokey Robinson wrote "Girl, You Been in Love Too Long," Allen Toussaint did some others, but that's as pop as it gets. Green Light's good too, and Home Plate, then I'd get Sweet Forgiveness and The Glow from the bargain bin (all of this has finally been remastered, but prob that's in the bin too). That Straitjackets album is creative recastings of ancient American rock hits, xhuxx, like ancient Mexican hipologists used to do all the time ("El Microscopico Bikini" is reworked "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini")

Yeah, figured I'd misconstrued that, somehow. (And earlier meant to say that "maybe atmospherics makes for good records, just not great ones." In the background now: A highly atmospheric 1993 album by the noise band Smegma. Hey, it beats Mercury Rev.)

well, I mean Xgau likes the New York Dolls a lot more than he probably likes Morricone, but I don't, really. maybe he's thinking that Morricone is just one step up from that space-age bachelor-pad shit of the early '90s and that bothers him. I guess I don't see how adding Morricone-style sound effects or "atmospherics" necessarily add up to anything better or worse than your average rock and roll any more than Randy Newman doing his little Broadway-parody arrangements adds up to a debasement of rock and roll itself or whatever. but yeah, my point really was that it ought to be a breeze; it seems more or less like a breeze in general to me these days, for Chrissake my significant other likes Marc Cohn and Sting and Stevie Winwood circa "If You See a Chance" and to her, that's just good singing and maybe I'm just tired of arguing ideology, I ain't dumb enough to do that with her. Because it is "good singing," a lot of it, and that makes me sit back and rethink some of what I've always believed, which has always been pretty close to the Xgau semipop line and all that. "good singing" being analogous to "atmosphere" and "soundtracky" maybe.

the first Sarah Borges thing, on Silver City? label, has always been my fave, even more so than the second record she did, which I loved at the time but maybe now I'll go back and find I don't like it so much...

Area Code 615 that is. Kaliedoscope are the ones who were in the 415 area, rat?

I believe they were from L.A. But who knows -- maybe they spent some time in SF?

Some time in Science Fiction, anyway. Not the lyrics as much as the music, which speculates and expands (psychedelic=mind-expanding, though not bothering to stay with the "psych" tag, a stylistic marker only-not when, for inst, they recorded with Johnny Guitar Watson)(and yeah xxuxx, usually we want to check "music that appeals to our tastes<" but I also look for music that pulls me from what I've written about as "the grave of taste," in the sendse that taste can beone more habit that sticks a fork in my ass cos I'm done==and xgau gets pulled out sometimes too, like, I guess, when he gets hooked on Cachao or the Buena Vista masters, though prob not the Breakfast Club album, despite not getting salsa--and not that they play salsa, but such experiences go around, though not through, some barriers--I hope I never "get" a lot of stuff I now can't stand, but Time Of Orchids and Shearwater show me how some prev. repulsive elements *can* be very enjoyable and/or admirable--and getting back to the country for a minute, that collection of George Strait's 500 or 50 #1 Hits showed me how Andy Williams-type golf course crooning *could* be good; I liked about 25 of 'em anyway! Pretty good, esp, considering that #1 Hits are a shady category, re what it takes to get there so damn often--Elvis's Top Ten Hits is a much more roadworthy collection than his #1s, for instance)

So moving means purging (though I haven't been purginig nearly enough of course), and I noticed Lalena was going to give away her copy of k.d. lang and the reclines' 1987 Angel With A Lariat, which I didn't even know she owned and which I hadn't listened to in 20 years. So I decided to this morning, and determined that it is still the only k.d. lang album I will ever like. Had forgotten that Dave Edmunds produced the thing, but that totally makes sense -- it's a real catchy new wave cowpunk rockabilly record, especially side two (which leads with a version of "Rose Garden" that's like the missing link between Lynn Anderson and Kon Kan). Thing is, k.d.'s voice is my least favorite thing about the album; it's just not a rockabilly voice -- weightless, made of air, no gravity, never touches the earth, which I guess is what people like about it but I don't hear her conveying anything at all. As much as I like the record, I'd probably like it more with almost any other random female country singer. So I guess I understand why k.d. switched to more, uh, atmospheric music soon after, but at least this one had some hooks that could be grabbed onto, and I like that she wasn't taking herself with such deathly dull seriousness yet -- I almost get the idea she was going to be marketed as the country Cyndi Lauper or something. Didn't work commercially, though. (She didn't make the Top 200 album chart in Billboard until Shadowland a year later, which I have no interest in hearing again.)

Yeah, that's a good 'un. (Where is old Dave anyway? At least he's not presenting us with those twilight time snoozes like Nick Lowe's recent bequests.)I also like Absolute Torch 'n' Twang; despite its title, prob her best mainstream-country-plausible set--it's got her Western Canada ranch gal roots, flexing "Tallll in the Saddle," without any shootout etc scenarios. "Trail of Broken Hearts, " oo wee.Atmospheric like the wind swooping, brushing 'cross the plain. Shadowland was a touch too framed by its black and white cover photography, but also had that group vocal with Loretta Lynn and Kitty Wells

My Blender review of the new Jason Isbel:

http://www.blender.com/guide/reviews.aspx?id=5435

Also, in case anybody cares, here is a thread full of C90 mixes I made for myself, mostly in the late '80s and early '90s (a few of which actually cannibalize mixes that Frank and Scott Seward had sent me first.) One thing that surprises me is how little country -- at least current country -- is on them. I was even listening to more, uh, salsa then. Maybe even more Brit-pop. (Not to mention lots of old-school hip-hop, punk, other stuff.) Weird!

Song Lists From Ancient Mix Cassettes I Just Pulled Out Of Storage After Several Years

Someday I need to pinpoint the exact moment I became a commercial country convert. I have a feeling that Metal Mike talking about liking a lot of it at the tail-end of the '90s was a major waker-upper. (Garth and Shania no doubt helped some, too. I was definitely watching CMT some in the early '90s, though, which helps explain the stray Lorrie Morgan and Little Texas tracks that pop up on these mixes. Even did a video rundown once for Radio On.)

(Almost no then-current heavy metal or "teen pop" on the mixes either -- unless hair-metal counts. Which, again, is what lotsa country wound up sounding like.)

i believe you once in Voice credited the Army with schooling your suburban ass on country, via initially involuntary exposure (maybe when you were comparing Tom T. Hall's Germany-based military experience, referenced in song, to to your own). Speaking of atmospherics, caught and was caught by a misty morning encounter with a new brush-by cover of Townes Van Zandt's "If I Needed You" (who else covered this, in a hit version maybe?) Turned out to be a new track by Kimmie Rhodes, known mainly in Texas, I think. Once briefly owned an album where she mentioned how she just didn't understand how some people aren't eternally Grateful for this blessed blessed world, mentioned that once too often. Inspired closer, mist-dissolving scrutiny. But (vaguely recalled) reliable sources insist she can be awesome, and "If I Needed You," though not awesome, is close enough to make me wonder (maybe she's just better on covers--anybody know her other work?)

Well, yeah...I self-schooled myself on old country when I was in the Army (and before that, I'd met a few kids in college at Missouri who were fans of CDB and Willie and Waylon etc., which at the time they referred to as "progressive country"), but I'm talking about the post-Urban Cowboy (and especially '90s and beyond) pop-crossover-type stuff here. I had little use for that until the late '90s, seems to me -- which those mixes seem to confirm. (Though there were clear exceptions, most obiously the Bellamy Brothers, who I wrote about for the Voice. Wrote about John Anderson more, though.)

Or maybe a more accurate way to map it out is that I paid cursory attention to some country (mostly neo-trad stuff) through most of the '80s, but then I stopped paying attention for several years, and didn't get really obsessed about it above most other genres until I was living in NYC, of all places.

More evidence is that, in year-by-year discographies in the back of Accidental Evolution (15 albums per year), very few country albums make my '80s and '90s lists -- Best-Of LPs by John Anderson, CDB, John Conlee, Bellamy Brothers, K.T. Oslin, Garth Brooks (only one of those mainly a '90s act), and I think that's it. Yet in the past few years, most of my #1 Pazz & Jop ballot albums have been by country acts -- Big N Rich, Montgomery Gentry, Brooks & Dunn, Jamey Johnson. I'm wondering now what set that shift in motion, and why it happened.

Er, guess I don't really mean "pop crossover" (since none of those current acts I just mentioned actually cross over pop), but just plain "contemporary."

just posted on the Isbell thread now, but wanted to mention I chatted with Jason here in Nashvegas for a good half-hour on Monday. Smart guy, who went to music school in Memphis, so what we ended talking about was shit like Duke Ellington and arranging and suchlike. he then got his guys together and did a brief 5-6-song set at Grimey's, and apart from a few vocal gaffes (he's a good singer but I can tell he's not, er, taking care of his voice, and he's now 30), it all sounded great. Some kind of mix of '70s calibration and more direct soul/country stuff.

I hear that Booker T. and Neil Young have contributed to some of the new Drive-By Truckers shit, and that Patterson Hood will have a new one out soon. Also been listening to this Doug Sahm tribute, nothing's quite kicked in but I gotta go back and give it more time I guess.

The forthcoming Booker T. album is backed by the Truckers, and Neil may be on it too (remember, Booker T & The MGs have backed Neil on at least one tour--think it was the whole group-- and some members def on some of his tours; check the Red Rocks live CD and more stuff on DVD, or was on VHS,anyway). So, if he's on theirs, fair enough (wonder if Spooner Oldham's keys are still in the mix as well?) Saw a YouTube vid of Booker T. sitting in with Isbell & 440s at last year's SXSW, recorded on somebody's phone, judging by crap sonics, but when Booker T. took a solo, he surged through der hiss.

Snooks Eglin just died. He's not country but a unique, great New Orleans guitarist. I added details about the sad manner of his passing on this thread--Snooks Eaglin ?

Yeah, I think I got the Booker T. thing mixed up.

I saw Snooks Eaglin three times, and he was always great, with really good taste in covers. He was tagged as a folk musician when he wasn't, early on, which sorta relates here in a way I guess.

Notable chart movement this week below. (Huge leap for Jamey's drug song; good leap for Rich's Detroit song. Hadn't noticed til now that "Marry For Money" and "It Happens," both of which I like, were doing well. "Sissy's Song" seemed sappy last year. Need to hear the Lost Trailers, Bombshel, and Chris Young.)

21 26 34 3 Shuttin' Detroit Down, John Rich
J.Rich (J.Rich,J.D.Anderson ) Warner Bros. DIGITAL | WRN | 21
22 24 24 7 Marry For Money, Trace Adkins
F.Rogers (D.Turnbull,J.Melton ) Capitol Nashville DIGITAL | 22
25 28 28 19 How 'Bout You Don't, The Lost Trailers
B.Beavers (S.Nielson,V.McGehe,J.Stover ) BNA DIGITAL | 25
35 38 40 6 Whatever It Is, Zac Brown Band
K.Stegall,Z.Brown (Z.Brown,W.Durrette ) Home Grown/Atlantic DIGITAL | Big Picture | 35
40 1 It Happens, Sugarland
B.Gallimore,K.Bush,J.Nettles (J.O.Nettles,K.Bush,B.Pinson ) Mercury DIGITAL | 40
43 46 47 12 Like A Woman, Jamie O'Neal
R.Good (J.O'Neal,S.Bentley,J.Femino ) 1720 PROMO SINGLE | 43
45 NEW 1 Sissy's Song, Alan Jackson
K.Stegall (A.Jackson ) Arista Nashville DIGITAL | 45
46 60 2 High Cost Of Living, Jamey Johnson
The Kent Hardley Playboys (J.Johnson,J.T.Slater ) Mercury DIGITAL | 46
50 53 56 4 Blue Jeans And A Rosary, Kid Rock
Kid Rock,R.Cavallo (R.J.Ritchie,M.Young ) Top Dog/Atlantic PROMO SINGLE | CO5 | 50
51 54 55 4 Wild At Heart, Gloriana
M.Serletic (M.Serletic,J.Kear,S.Bentley ) Emblem PROMO SINGLE | New Revolution | 51
54 NEW 1 Fight Like A Girl, Bomshel
C.Howard (K.Shepard,K.Osmunson,B.Regan ) Curb PROMO SINGLE | 54
58 NEW 1 Country Star, Pat Green
D.Huff (P.Green,B.James ) BNA DIGITAL | 58
59 NEW 1 Love Your Love The Most, Eric Church
J.Joyce (E.Church,M.P.Heeney ) Capitol Nashville DIGITAL | 59
60 NEW 1 Gettin' You Home (The Black Dress Song), Chris Young
J.Stroud (C.Young,C.Batten,K.Blazy ) RCA DIGITAL | 60

Had been looking for Carolyn Wonderland's Miss Understood for a bit and, initially, it's a letdown from the build-up and cover photo of roots lady in army jacket with peace sign and guitar, hair-flying.

Best song is Rick Derringer's "Still Alive and Well" which lives up to billing. The rest is split between blooz & such, mid-tempo stuff screwed up with additions of do-nothing horns instead of just turning up the guitar. The rest is country, probably to the taste of No Depressioners. Best of these is "Long Way to Go" and "Feed Me to the Lions." Worst is "The Farmer Song" -- dull as dishwater, just like you'd think most songs with "Farmer" in the title should be. Am compelled to give it more chances to grow but my question is when someone does a record lie this, why can't they even play the blues as well as Foghat, Savoy Brown or Chicken Shack?

Because they're Texan, and one has to make concessions to being a rural but tasteful hack when doing Texas fern bars in 2009, more than British men in duffle coats doing the same in dives in Milton Keynes in 1969?

Boy, this sounds so bad. "Still Alive and Well" is great, "Long Way to Go" has some charm.

Bombshel, Lost Trailers, and Chris Young hits are no great shakes. Respectively: Two-girl harmony advice from mom to daughter about staying strong through life; last-ditch power-ballad (vaguely verging on '80s commercial Richard-Marx-level medium-soft rock) attempt to withstand a breakup before it slams door; decently sung wait til I get you home quasi-lust. None of them better than ho-hum on one listen.

Still no official "High Cost Of Living" promo vid on youtube (anybody who has CMT -- is there one there?); ditto "Shuttin' Detroit Down," though the latter has at least inspired a couple fan clips. Sounds like there's two different versions of the song; so far I prefer the more downcast and folkish version, which seems to capture the graveness of the situation more, to the more click-tracky upbeat mix where John should've hired Kenny Aronoff. But I can see why the latter might sound better on a car radio.

Fan vid for the click-tracky one has more politics (covertly seems to blame Detroit's current economic state on Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank, which is baloney) but also a couple really moving shots with abandoned lots in them (also as many farmers as auto workers, which is odd); fan vid for the folkish mix has more Detroit (assembly line history, sports teams, Motown, city landmarks, rock stars, some kid band apparently called the Muldoons whose uncle maybe put together the video, who knows.) Detroit-heavy one yanks my heartstrings more, so here it is:

Comments are fun to read, too:

tinyandy4 (5 days ago) song is great, your video sucks

I'm from the 313. you act like you are from the 248

punkmusicmike (5 days ago) If you were to take some time snd look st my profile you would have figured out I "come from the 586". How does someone "from the 248" act? What is this area code crap anyway?

I made the video because I wanted to contribute and let people know I care about Detoit. Your 313!

I love John Rich's song and these are the first things that came to mind when I made the vid.

daphneowl (3 days ago) What I think what he means by "248" (Oakland County) is that there is a lack of black folks and black perspective in this video. It is Detroit proud, but definitely represents a white nostalgia view of the city. Not trying to start a race debate here (I can go to the freep for that). Just sayin.

punkmusicmike (3 days ago) Others can vouch for me as I an not racist at all. I am pretty diverse as I am from the 313, the 810 and now it's called the 586 haha ;-D

The funny thing is I really don't care for the music of Kid Rock but I did add him.

I really, really wanted to add the Detroit Tigers Willie Horton but I figured more people would know who Al Kaline was. I loved watching Willie and Gates Brown play baseball!

These comments evoke a "school kids" version of Alexandra Pelosi's Feeling Wronged: Voices from the Right.

Fwiw, I posted this over on Poptimists about Taylor Swift videos, responding to Lex's saying about "Love Story": "So much better without the video, the song's all about the details and the minutiae, and the video just goes in the opposite direction and detracts from the song."

I agree totally about the Taylor vid. The dressy dresses in the "Our Song" vid had been so incongruous as to be fascinatingly weird and who cares if they have nothing to do with the song (and they really defy the country standard of dressing like your audience), but "Love Story" is just Prince Charming and Princess Taylor stereotypes that do nothing for the song's actual fear and hope ("we'll make it out of this mess"). The vid for "Teardrops On My Guitar" is brilliantly spot-on normal in the high-school scenes and so bizarrely strange with her doll-costume and fake glitter tears in the "home in bed and dreaming scene" as to be brilliant too. My favorite vid is the pre-megasales "Tim McGraw," which is also my favorite song of hers, the guy playing the boyfriend having such a handsomely unrevealing face that he's perfect as the boy ambivalently addressed in the song. Great use of standard pastorale scenes that the song lyrics give an edge of uneasiness to. Compare to the great Deanna Carter's "Strawberry Wine" ("I was thirsty for knowledge, and he had a car"), the prototype for both the song and the vid, but the video for "Tim McGraw" has a much clearer sense of its story. "Picture To Burn," which I totally missed at the time, seems like a quickie concept, "let's do a takeoff on a whole bunch of new wave and rock show videos," and is disappointing in the way it hints at some "Kerosene" or "Before He Cheats" action but then keeps taking you back to the rock show. "White Horse," which just came out last week, works really well as the anti-"Love Story" vid; e.g., the way she finds out that her boyfriend is going with someone else is by seeing him carrying groceries to the other girl's door. I like the way that she plays neither poor nor fancy in the restaurant and house settings. (Too bad I don't like the melody in the chorus.)

(Xhuxk, one reason there might not have been much "teenpop" on those cassettes is that it's not all that clear what "teenpop" would have been back then (except as you say, Poison and Slaughter and Guns N' Roses etc.), though there's always a persistent bubblegum fringe with one or two big acts and then a bunch of novelties, but very little that would come across as kids-only in the way that HSM is now. New Kids obviously, New Edition except they were earlier and I don't think Bobby Brown, Bel Biv DeVoe et al. on their own counted as teenpop (though don't know why I say that, and the latter were a template for the Backstreet Boys). Paula Abdul was big among teens and tweens and five-year-olds but also among adults. TV has been a generator of teenpop since Ricky Nelson on Ozzie & Harriet, but you didn't then have kids-only TV networks generating lots of those singers, and I don't think any general TV show of the time was producing teen singers in the U.S. in the way that Neighbours gave Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan to Australia and Britain. The U.S. had 21 Jump Street but Johnny Depp didn't sing (though he did once tell Smash Hits the name of his favorite group, and the reporter wrote, "We couldn't quite understand what he was saying but it sounded something like 'Lemon Bagel Surfers'"). Maybe there were boybands that came and went in the late '80s and early '90s that had scads of fans and that no one like me knew anything about. Not at all impossible. Tiffany and Debbie Gibson might be relevant late '80s acts and Brandy and TLC in the '90s, and with those acts we're starting to get the shift towards teenybopper girls listening to girls (though Madonna sets that off a decade earlier, to some extent). And I guess the Spice Girls were a mass breakthrough of some kind (as I suppose were Hanson on the boy side). Anyway, forgive the noncountry intrusion here. I'm probably forgetting about somebody obvious. A lot of kids were fans of Pearl Jam and Nirvana, I'm sure.)

Well, I guess I just meant that there were no songs by NKOTB, Debbie Gibson, Tiffany, or Hanson on the tapes. (There's a Lisa Lisa song and a Vanilla Ice one, though. And one of the tapes that I didn't transcribe titles from starts with two songs from Hanson's Xmas album.)

So in this morning's NYT, Jon Caramanica compared the guitars from "Eight Second Ride" on Jake Owen's first album (in a review of his second one) to "a more thoughtful Black Sabbath." Pretty sure he was exaggerating (and I'm not convinced Sabbath were especially unthoughtful in the first place), but maybe I'll go back and check sometime.

Played the new Flatlanders and Eric Church albums again today. The latter had more rocking songs, but I think I liked the former more regardless. It was close, though. "Smoke A Little Smoke," one of the more rocking songs on Church's albums, is really starting to get on my nerves (as does one of its other rocking songs, "Lotta Boot Left To Fill") and not only because I can't figure out why Eric thinks we need "a little more right and a little less left," which doesn't seem to have anything to do with any political opinions he expresses in any other songs, as far as I can tell.

Played the new Jason Aldean the other day, too. Better than mediocre, I guess, though I can't recommend it any more than that. Also better than the Heartless Bastards album, as far as I can tell.

I heard a track by them that seemed good. No relation to McMurtry's group of the same name, apparently. Frank used the word "pastoral" for what feels like the first time on Rolling Country threads, and I shall use it once more, in the following show preview (album co-produced by Mark Nevins, frequently associated with the more Whisperin' Edd-worthy review objects)
Lambchop was once an orchestral party of floating friends and strange guests. Almost twenty years later, as a smaller, imperfectly focused but durable unit, they're flexible role models for quirky indie rockers. Their new album, "OH(Ohio)," vividly personalizes the early 70s pastoral romance (hippie make-out music) of sets like Van Morrison's "Tupelo Honey," as head Lambchopper Kurt Wagner brings mixed feelings to the one who still inspires his affections and obsessions. But he knows the approach: with tiny, surreal, bittersweet jokes, gentle and otherwise, intimately glinting in bouquets of images, usually changed before wilting (not totally unlike Love & Theft, though I'd rather hear Cap'n D. growling at his old lady---in both cases, in many cases, I do relate to mixed emotions--ah, the richness as you stir, otherwise they bogs)

Wagner does have a sometimes schticky tendency to swallow certain clues like he's proudly swallowing li'l frogs, once he's got me hooked (though it ain't me he's hopin' for to stay hooked, the one that's got him hooked on trying to impress)

Yeah, I was probably at least a wee bit too flippant and abrupt in my dismissal of that new Heartless Bastards album here last night. Played about half of it this morning back-to-back with about half each of those Michelle Malone, Jaden South, and Ellen Jewel Triple country-folk-rock gal albums I'd mentioned this morning, and the Heartless Bastards are unarguably more distinctive than any of them -- not much in the way of tunes or rhythm, but a few songs have some stomp to them, and I'm guessing their fans are responding to both the lush ooze of Erika Wennestrom's guitar and the lush ooze of her voice (which reminds me of some late '60s/early '70s cult woman singer I can't place.) Me, though, I really can't get past that singing, which just strikes me as way too immobile and detached and codeined-out. Nothing anybody (including Frank) has written has sold me on them. But maybe something will, who knows.

As for Malone and Jaden South, both of them seem to succumb to either voices or production too thin to match both of their too-intermittent Sheryl Crow-style Stones riffs. And Ellen Jewel just hits me as Lucinda-by-numbers, without Kathleen Edwards' hooks, and I'm not enough a Lucinda fan in the first place.

"Triple A country-folk-rock," I meant.

As for Jason Aldean, he's just a Nashville hat hack, and not an especially interesting as far as I can hear (though his guitars still get nicely loud on occasion.) But unlike those four distaff albums I just talked about, at least his hacky CD has hooks.

" not an especially interesting one."

Can't remember which Eilee Jewel album I heard, but, although there were a couple decent tracks, most of it was horrribly boring (and I'm one who does usually like Lucinda and several others Jewel often gets compared to)

Whisperin' Edd wrote mighty fine liner notes for two worthy, oft remarkable Caroline Peyton reissues (I prefer the earlier one, which even smoothly melds proto-mainstream balladry with even earlier psych pastoral excursions; the second is eminiently qualified resume rock. Chekum both) He reports on a recent show(with Clem Snide!), and links to a concise but more detailed run-down:

...she played Basement last nite and evoked Linda Thompson on Bo
Diddley-modal "White Teeth", Joni on "Gone for a Day" and rocked
"Fishin' Blues." she's still got it.
story:
http://www.nashvillecitypaper.com/news.php?viewStory=66332

--at least one song from the *high school musical* OST, "breaking free", sounds as much like a pop-country power ballad to me as a teen-pop power ballad (isn't that one of the big download hits? i think so, since it's one of two tracks with a "karaoke instrumental" version at the end of the CD. and come to think of it, the instumental - which i I kind of like; when I first heard it, it was in my random CD changer, and I guessed it was by either tea leaf green or the tossers! -- sounds somewhat rural or pastoral or whatever as well.) the non-karaoke rendition is said to be sung by leading man troy + leading lady gabrielle.
--Xhuxk, February 20, 2006

Birdie Bush seems more interesting to me (than do Pinmonkey). I need to take her home and put her in my CD changer with the new album by Espers, and figure out which (if any) has more Fairport Convention pastoral gorgeousness. (They're both from Philly, right? Where phreak pholk lives, I guess.)
--Xhuxk, February 23, 2006

On Wildflower, her latest album, Sheryl's mostly going for meadows and brooks and Hallmark Cards pastorale, albeit vaguely about relationships and feelings rather than about actual flowers. Occasionally achieves the misty beauty she's trying for, but not often. I miss the great codependent holes she used to dig herself into and then try to blast out of, "The Difficult Kind" and "My Favorite Mistake." I'm right now listening to her new track, "Try Not To Remember," for the first time, and it's one of the better things I've heard from her recently, also the most teenpop (sounds a bit like "Behind These Hazel Eyes" in the chorus, just like Chuck's least favorite song on the Taylor Swift), though it's arrangement is more womby-tweepop like Jewel or McLachlan, and it slowly bleeds to death at the end.
--Frank Kogan, January 22, 2007

(Daniel Lee) Martin's more the rugged outdoorsman, apparently, but I really like the rocker about the girl born into a family whose business is moonshine, and the outdoorsy anthem about why tall buildings in cities are why God made rivers, and the song about it depends which way you look at it with the dark hard opening riff that reminds me that Bob Dylan's "Hurricane" was pretty dark and rocking song, and the pastoral introduction to the John Denver cover which I haven't otherwise listened to yet.

The guy whose imminent album I'm surprised to determine is geared largely to women (though he probably always had a certain beefcake appeal about him, and I can see why he might decide to emphasize that in the Trace Adkins era) is Travis Tritt. Most audacious cut on The Storm (an album which by the way I believe Randy Jackson is said to have played a major role on) is "Rub Off On Me," borderline porn-for-housewives that I swear might as well really be called "Rub One Out On Me," since that's what it seems to me about; that parody boy band from a few years ago 2Gether would be very impressed. It's this sort of slow funk bump-and-grinder (funkier than the also soul-sistered funk-flirting single "You Never Take Me Dancing," to my ears) where Travis tells this woman to get it off her chest, and at the end the music just drops out for a while to a spare beat and r&b singers repeatedly chanting the title over and over again -- takes its time finishing, in other words. The other songs I really like on the album are the Skynyrd/CDB-style swing-funk two-step (which namedrops "Gimme Three Steps") "High Time For Gettin' Down," plus somewhere between two and four slow intense Southern rock bluesers: cheating in the next room song "The Pressure Is On" (which opens with a pastoral Led Zeppelin lick); kicked out of the house song (his clothes are thrown all over the room and his credit cards are gone and so is she and his wallet's in the yard) "Should've Listened" (but instead like he learned from his Daddy everything she said went in one ear and out the other and now he's paying for it), and maybe "The Storm" and "Somehow, Somewhere, Someway." "Something Stronger Than Me" (= Jesus or liquor) is an okay gospely thing; "Doesn't The Good Outweight The Bad" is a boogie kept fairly light with some tra-la-las, and most of the rest (the stuff that doesn't grab me) is sentimental stuff for the ladies. But all in all, better than I expected.
--Xhuxk, July 22, 2007

The Daniel Lee Martin passage was also by Xhuxk, March 31, 2007.

Also spent a lot of time this week listening to the intricate pastoral acoustic Scandinavian Celtic chamber jig prog bluegrass mandolin nyckelharp violin 12-string and so on folk of Mike Marshall & Darol Anger's With Vasen (imagine umlaut over the "a" in Vasen.) From Sweden, I thought from the CD package, but their myspaces place them in California, which I will try not to hold against them even it decreases their mysteriousness factor. I think I tend to like them better in jig mode (i.e., "Yew Piney Mt") than Penguin Cafe Orchestra mode (i.e, "Misch Masch"), but both sound good. "Os Pintinhos" (which appears to have tango parts, or something) is defintely another favorite of mine
--Xhuxk, September 22, 2007

Xhuxx, New Bloods' music instantly took me run skip hop dub through the big bad woods with these somewhat gunpowdery little red riding hoods, but woods, like folk, pastoral tec don't nec.=country, they seem a little too urban, in the sense of "I know trouble when I see it three blocks away, cross the street [or the creek] almost without thinking"--not making as big a deal of it, in bravura and/or brooding a way as country tends too--not that some big ceety types don't make a big deal too, but either way goes with urban (New Bloods do take note of shadows etc but they're used to it, wothout getting that mountain-fatalistic about it, or maybe I'm distracted by the music, but that's part of the non-country feel)(but I'll listen some more)
--Dow, November 13, 2008

New Miley Cyrus single, "The Climb," has a "country mix" that is microscopically different from this one, will be officially released to the country market on March 9. The differences I could hear are a bit of steel guitar and less guitar crunch. Produced by John Shanks, written by Jessi Alexander, Jon Mabe. Miley and the rest of them do a good job, and I don't mind listening to it, though sky-reaching power ballads aren't really my kind of song.

And then there's the "Miley Cyrus Hoedown Throwdown," Miley seeing if she can be Cowboy Troy and also create her own Crank That Soulja Boy type dance, doesn't make it. Where is Ludacris when you really need him?

I'm glad to see how often and well we did use that word, and I still need to check out that Travis Tritt album. Mike Marshall were in the David Grisman Quintet thirty years ago, playing music that changed some of my friends' lives,starting with their careers; later they were bands like Psychograss and the Modern Mandolin Quintet, maybe the Turtle Island String Quartet too, and many things since, playing glorious Americana chamber music with some doors cut into and windows kicked out of the chamber, all going back to what Grisman always called dawg music. Just saw a re-run of the Saturday Night Live with Taylor Swift doing her prince and princess song. The band didn't showboat, but the song,judging by basic practicalities of guitar-friendly framework supporting innocuously hott daydreams of words and tune, seemed most effective insofar as it was designed for the ace musos' pleasantly muscular delivery (incl. their discreet backup vocals). But she's a good hostess, not unlike the singers who basically presented big bands, and it's the total effect that counts.

Mike Marshall and Darryl Anger were in the David Grisman Quintet, I meant (and I might have a very dif opinion of the studio version of Taylor's song, but it doesn't seem like the song itself as much potential, however much the singer may have)

Looks like the No Depression website is ending its editorial functions--which I guess means no more feature articles or reviews. Now it will just house blogs and a message board.

Darol Anger

So what inspired you to search "pastoral", Frank? (Not that there needs to be a particular reason, obviously. But if there was one, I missed it.)

Chart action: "Shuttin' Down Detroit" up 21-->18; "High Cost Of Living" up 46-->43; Randy Houser "Boots On" debuts at 59.

And for what it's worth, I now live in Texas. (Though not actually in Austin until the end of this week, when my boxes arrive, hopefully intact.)