Thread for Lydia Loveless, Country-Rock Lady I Enjoy

this album is terrific. WINE LIPS, imo, is the highlight of a very strong set of songs/performances.

Album is really good. One of the best of its kind, whatever that is, since the s/t Lucinda Williams. Or at least of a kind with that one.

Actually, maybe I'm getting Patty Griffin "Flaming Red" vibes from this?

since I posted up there on March 1, I've decided this is my favorite record of 2014 so far, which shocks the hell out of me

Every time I play this it's like "damn, why don't I play this all the time?" Appreciate the reminder.

Head is such a killer track. The cover at the end is great. There's basically one song on the whole album I don't love, and I don't even skip that one

"Wine Lips," "Head," "Verlaine Shot Rimbaud" make a heck of a trilogy. The one about the farm kills too; pretty much true-to-life, apparently (but if they hadn't had to sell it, her Dad might not have time to be her drummer, or not such a kickass one)

Yeah, this is absolutely great.

Not convinced it's better than Indestructible Machine yet, but there's clear growth/refinement. I've never gotten Lucinda or Patty vibes from Lydia--more just general Bloodshot vibes.

Definitely: solo and various combinations of Kelly Hogan, pre-New P. Neko, Carolyn Mark; also, in days of old, bands led by or featuring crucial female presences, like Trailer Bride, Moonshine Willie, The Meat Purveyors, The Mekons, for that matter (Plus others, mostly all-guy acts, I didn't follow as closely, like Split Lip Rayfield, Waco Brothers, Deadstring Brothers, Ha Ha Tonka, Robbie Fulks).

All Bloodshot! Or Bloodshot-distributed, like Carolyn Mark's albums on Canadian label Minty Fresh.

Deadstring Bros. are the best of the group of acts you "didn't follow as closely" that I know (not familiar with Split Lip Rayfield), but they're all basically in the lineage of The Mekons --> Uncle Tupelo --> A.M.-era Wilco. Certainly not earth-shattering, but Starving Winter Report is worth a listen.

See also: Nora O'Connor, Old 97s, Lone Justice.

Basically the personnel list for:

https://www.bloodshotrecords.com/files/styles/album-image/public/album-images/album_main_bs077.jpg?itok=jYvSuBIV

I picked this one up yesterday. Lots of terrific songs on here... especially feeling "Everything's Gone".

Speaking of Old 97s, she's doing a show with them in Columbus tomorrow evening; local station will stream: www.wcbe.org/listen! Dunno when it starts, exactly; promoter's site says "Doors Open 7:00 PM." That's Eastern Standard Time yall (note to Central self).

Corrected link: http://wcbe.org/listen

They're touring together. Saw photos of their DC gig but didn't make it myself.

new Old 97s album is approximately 74 bazillion times better than I would've expected it to be, ftr

Looks like they are not going to stream it, at least not now---I misunderstood the excited post on the station site. Shit, sorry.

saw her last night in a tiny packed club

amazing, obv

pre-set music was the entirety of the mats 'let it be' which

if i weren't already smitten

More details plz!

played a solid hour with stuff from all 3 records, roaring 3 guitar attack on the loud stuff and didn't miss a high note

mainly played a telecaster, which surprised me

surprised that it was a mostly middle aged crowd, but i guess she's doing kind of classic-rock-vibe stuff

saw her last night in a tiny packed club

amazing, obv

Yes! I saw her on a whim when I was in Louisville a few weeks ago, having never really listened to her before. Impressive. Did not know until I looked it up later that she's married to the bassist:
http://www.columbusalive.com/content/graphics/2014/02/26/ca-m-lydialoveless-10.jpg

they write a lot together too apparently

Washington Post freelancer liked her best at that gig without the band

Probably the most auspicious thing that happened to Loveless on Wednesday was when she popped a string on her electric guitar. Thereafter she played an acoustic guitar, allowing her vocals to float higher to the sonic surface.

For the final trio of songs, she performed alone. “Everything’s Gone” and “I Don’t Care (If Tomorrow Never Comes)” were simply heartbreaking.

The clutter was cut away. And the point was made very clear. Loveless may never figure out what or whom she wants, or why, but in her own hands and voice, she’s got everything she needs.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/lydia-loveless-deconstructing-country-rock-with-a-healthy-dose-of-frustration/2014/09/25/be3821a0-44db-11e4-8042-aaff1640082e_story.html

So glad she finally redeemed herself in that guy's eyes---and ears!

Just discovered her thanks to this thread, I love her! Thanks ILM!

Oh honey let me melt in your mouth tonight
Let me hold you in my palm like a prize tonight

She's great.

Last leg of the Somewhere Else tour: back to Skully's in Columbus on Friday, with another young Bloodshot turk: Cory Branan, whose new No-Hit Wonder incl. input from Isbell, Craig Finn etc. Can't cover it, but those currently better supplied w weed, whites and wine might be ready for the drive, before she goes away for a while:
https://www.facebook.com/events/1625543074336871/

i do like that cory branan

Lydia Loveless ‏@lydia_loveless

"So you are very straightforward and sing about sex. That's very manly."

Alfred on Lydia (and Jesse Ware, who seems pretty promising)
http://humanizingthevacuum.wordpress.com/2014/10/14/jessie-ware-lydia-loveless/ Note re his mention of Westerberg, she's been covering Replacements, often as encores, from way back.

Kinda like her but she reminds me of the Hold Steady of all people, including crap production and mixing. I'm guessing she's much better live than on record.

Sure, sounds just like Craig Finn. Meanwhile (this is educational, at least for me):

Lydia Loveless ‏@lydia_loveless

That awkward moment when a guy tries to hit on you as you're on your way to take a period poop #reallife

hahaha

Don't get the Hold Steady comparison either, but I agree the mixing/engineering could be 10x better. One of my favorite songs on the album is the "Everything's Gone," which is almost entirely her voice and acoustic guitar. It's a beautiful, gripping song, yet every time I listen to it, I can't help but think, "This acoustic guitar sounds like complete shit, and it sounds like she's singing in a barn."

Ie, classic Bloodshot.

Unusually I pretty much disagree completely with Alf's review : 'Verlaine Shot Rimbaud' may be my favourite song of the year - the (rive) gaucherie of the conceit is totally redeemed by the way she sings "Just wanna know that I'm the one that makes you write that *shit*". But she totally flubs the post-pause "bay-bee" in 'They Don't Know'. Had to fill in an albums of the year poll last week and made this my no.2 - thinking now it should have been my no.1

it was my #1 for a lot of the year, not sure if it's gonna end up there or get knocked down a peg or two, but definitely top 5

post-pause "bay-bee" is definitely not perfect, but it's cute that way

in addition to slightly duff production, the drumming's not great on Somewhere Else: guy slows down sometimes during tracks and does some cruddy fills (weird thing is, I think it's the same dude on tour and he sounded fine when I saw her in Sept.). She's absolutely worth seeing live---wonderful stage presence. "Wine Lips" was a revelation. Bassist/husband has unfortunate resemblance to a Will Ferrell character.

Last I heard, the drummer was still her dad, Parker Chandler. See the early featurette upthread: he was the live and studio linchpin of their family new wave band, but was replaced by a session player [outside producers' decision] on Lydia's solo debut, The Only Man, which is quite good, and bit more country than her subsequent studio sets (all self-produced, I think). He's a bar-band lifer, but still hasn't recorded much more than she has, so not gonna sound right to every ear.

She had to get rid of Drummer Dad a while back ... not sure if he played on the newest record or not:

http://exclaim.ca/Interviews/WebExclusive/lydia_loveless-cowpunks_cleanses/Page/2

About your dad — he was your original drummer.
Uh-huh.

And you had to fire him last year?
Yeah, and I hate to use the word fired. I don't know what I would use. But I mean it wasn't really like "You suck, get out of my band." I tour three or four months out of the year and I was like, you know my dad is getting older and does he really want to live in a van? And he has a grandson and all of that stuff. So I kind of like, sent him home. I felt terrible about it but I think it was ultimately for the best. I think he's a lot happier now not living in a van.

yeah, the guy on Something Else isn't her dad.

Her buddy Lizard McGee's Earwig albums, the ones I've heard, are kind of prog, but tight considering

Lizard McGee ‏@earwigtheband

Ruined my jeans. Wiped out while chasing @lydia_loveless around the car. I totally ate it.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B1AB9J5IYAAQ_7m.jpg:large

Lydia Loveless ‏@lydia_loveless

Snow as we flee the woods. And those dunes...I am definitely not 11 anymore #deathwalk

‏@pattersonhood

Lydia Loveless. Badass! @ Bijou Theatre http://instagram.com/p/wSXRoTyqwv/

So this director with a good track record is crowdfunding a Lydia doc:

https://files.ctctcdn.com/67e4e85b001/6e160f83-53c5-4db4-84c7-9c0e9e1d5257.jpg

The story thus far:

Filmmaker Gorman Bechard, who has chronicled three of the most influential bands in the history of rock and roll with documentaries about The Replacements, Archers of Loaf, and Hüsker Dü's Grant Hart is turning his camera towards the future with his next film, WHO IS LYDIA LOVELESS?

The feature-length documentary will follow Lydia Loveless and her band into the studio as they lay down tracks for their forthcoming record. Along with live performances shot specifically for the film and extensive interviews with Loveless and her band it will visit places integral to her musical development, delve into the realities of a working musician on the brink of major success, and answer the question: Who Is Lydia Loveless?

"Lydia is the future of rock and roll," director Bechard explains. "She straps you onto an emotional roller coaster of love, lust, drunken mistakes, a little stalking, a lot of heartbreak, and you're left breathless, stunned, happy to have taken the ride."

Music journalists from SPIN to Rolling Stone have likewise raved, with her last album SOMEWHERE ELSE finding its way onto many of 2014's Best Album lists.

"I'm excited to work with Gorman," says Loveless. "He's very passionate about music and about the true meaning and spirit of rock and roll."

Bechard's three previous music docs have all won critical praise. Rolling Stone called COLOR ME OBSESSED, A FILM ABOUT THE REPLACEMENTS one of "The Seven Best New Music Documentaries of the Year." The Seattle Times raved about the "raw power and mesmerizing hooks" in his Archers of Loaf concert film WHAT DID YOU EXPECT? While EVERY EVERYTHING: THE MUSIC, LIFE & TIMES OF GRANT HART was labeled "beautifully sad" by The Village Voice.

WHO IS LYDIA LOVELESS? will be funded via a KickStarter campaign that runs through March 18th. The KickStarter campaign can be found at www.WhoIsLydiaLoveless.com

Filming is slated for spring and summer 2015, with a premiere planned for 2016.

For more information please visit: www.WhatWereWeThinkingFilms.com

Or email any requests to: WhoIsLydiaLovelessMO✧✧✧@gm✧✧✧.c✧✧

Words can be amazing, music not as much.

It's all pretty slow, is what I mean.

Too cautious.

But I'll keep listening, prob get more involved in details, to some extent.

"Never" -- fabulous.

Yeah, the new one is really good.

This is the first year in ... years that I have not been able to keep up with all the good records I don't just think I need to hear but *want* to hear.

My first impression based on yesterday's afternoon listen is that her voice is too mix forward or something and kind of overpowers the rest of everything in a not great way. It's like a wet blanket.

First time through and agree with much of what's been said. I'm listening on shure iems and there are a few tunes, most notably "Can't Think," that sound super muddy beneath her vocals (somehow made even worse by some studio tricks in the last twenty seconds?). New producer/mixer appears to have done all the Jeff Tweedy associated production for the last decade, so surprised (https://www.allmusic.com/artist/tom-schick-mn0000934331). I thought the Bloodshot "sound" suited her well.

On the songwriting side, I like the second half more than the first. Side A has some downtempo tunes that lack the emotional gut punch of an "Everything's Gone." Side B has:
- "Never" - successful marriage of heartland rock and synth pop
- "When You're Gone" - really interesting structure without a clearly defined chorus (?) but still feels like a sing a long
- "September" - piano and cello ballad with some call and response help from Laura Jane Grace that works

All that to say, very hard to imagine Somewhere Else ever being impeached as my favorite of hers.

I will fall asleep and have fewer nightmares of death once I know that a Killer Psychiatrist is tucked away safely in a mental institution and led to believe he works there.

LL copes with late night-on-tour-to-quarantine anxieties via old faithful Lifetime:
https://www.nodepression.com/spotlight-lydia-loveless-on-leaning-into-lifetime-movies/?mc_cid=6035ce295f&mc_eid=b850f832a1

Might not have helped with the album though.

Enjoyed your review Alfred

Just skimmed this thread enough to be intrigued and really liking her stuff so thanks all.

Thank, ums!

Yeah. Wish I heard it more that way, maybe eventually.

okay now I do, should have stood by, as the President requests, and listened some more before maiden post. Helps that I came back to it after bandcamp streaming Boots 02: The Lost Songs Vol.2, by Gillian Welch, who is much closer, or more obviously (to this simple male mind) close to being a full-time inhabitant of this guarded, weathered truck garden of love and regret, the one with no-frills flights on a leash (and both artists' current sets sport fine September ramblin' bridge songs), but now I get that Loveless is more confrontational, just as intimate, but in a clinch, noting the marks she's leaving and has and will leave---and though, no "headbanging sweatbox catharis" as I prev. missed these flights do achieve liftoff into that LL narrative momentum:
I can’t believe the worst kinds of people achieve
Everything they want
But it takes medication to get me off

So sick and tired of living in a rut

Love is not enough
I wonder if it ever was
I shouldn’t have to bleed you dry to fill me up
Not that she's letting him off the hook---ooo, always wanting her tp provide a little "sun," like,"Smile more often, " like the Bossman say---and the way she gets from opening with:
What is my body worth to you
Without your blood in it
to closing time:
If I gave you a daughter would you open up,
and all points in between, as ZZ Top would put it, via LL wide-awake dream logic, relentlessly articulate---is true grit poetry, LL as hell, incl. Loretta Lynn talking points.
And seems more like To Be Continued than total closer (she's tweeted something about pregnancy).
The music, as written, arranges and performed-inhabited, now carries me through the words much more than on first listen, and the last track's dark groove, pushing on falling back pushing on, also seems like something To Be Continued---still hoping for more remixes, for one thing.

Tangential to Loveless, but I had no idea the extent of this mess:

https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/bloodshot-records-nan-warshaw-rob-miller-royalties-sale/Content?oid=84834310

ugh

Forgot about all that for a little bit

Warshaw’s excuse for not doing anything about her partner’s harassment is pathetic.

Yeah this is revealing:

Nearly two years before Loveless's post, she says, Miller told her "out of nowhere" that a female Bloodshot artist had confided in him that Panick was sexually harassing her. He didn't initially name the artist or get into specifics about Panick's misdeeds. Warshaw says those omissions left her powerless to rectify the situation and set her up to appear unsympathetic...

He adds that Warshaw should've known the allegations he'd originally shared involved Loveless. "I said it was an artist at our South by Southwest showcase that year," he explains. "Lydia was, that year, the only female artist. I assumed, falsely, that Nan could extrapolate that I didn't mean that the Waco Brothers were being harassed."

Stiener says that Loveless had only recouped $2,000 after three albums

@lydia_loveless
This is super corny, but I had a dream last night me and the band were on tour with DBT. It was one of those I am sad that isn’t real/sort of keeping me positive today dreams. I hope one day we can actually live real life again.
5:30 PM · Jan 31, 2021

@lydia_loveless
Also I wish I could say I am using this time to write the album of my dreams and be there for people, I’m actually consuming art and making it in a way that is equivalent to standing in front of the fridge naked and blasting reddiwhip into your mouth. I am not ok. But will be.

Lydia Loveless
@lydia_loveless
I’m currently at a school for audio engineering surrounded by people ten years younger than me and I’m amazed thinking about all the older people trying to bang me at that age. Please let young adults be young adults they are the future

Lydia Loveless
@lydia_loveless
Just got divorced and now have reached the age where all my peers are getting Christmas engaged lol
7:46 PM · Dec 26, 2021

Every time she tweets about her divorce there's a mob of reply guys.

Lydia Loveless
@lydia_loveless
I’ve been really hard on myself my entire life and it hasn’t really done me that much good. There was a decade or so where flogging myself internally furthered my career but now I’m just thinking maybe gentleness is what I need. New ye201ar more oily mental masturbation is my mantra
8:28 PM · Dec 31, 2021
210 likes
Lydia Loveless
@lydia_loveless
Just lubing up my sore brain and easing back from the ol socials and will see you when I’m a big sexy oil can again.
8:30 PM · Dec 31, 2021
112 likes

@lydia_loveless
This is super corny, but I had a dream last night me and the band were on tour with DBT. It was one of those I am sad that isn’t real/sort of keeping me positive today dreams. I hope one day we can actually live real life again.
5:30 PM · Jan 31, 2021

Welp

DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS LIVE 2022
* with special guest Lydia Loveless
APRIL
12 - Ponte Vedra, FL - Ponte Vedra Concert Hall *
14 - Augusta, GA - Imperial Theatre *
15 - Nashville, TN - Brooklyn Bowl Nashville *
16 - Nashville, TN - Brooklyn Bowl Nashville *
18 - Lexington, KY - The Burl (Outdoors) *
20 - Ashland, KY - Paramount Arts Center *
21 - Harrisburg, PA - Harrisburg Midtown Arts Center *
22 - Syracuse, NY - Westcott Theater *
23 - Ottawa, ON - Bronson Centre *
24 - Toronto, ON - Danforth Music Hall *
26 - Burlington, VT - Higher Ground *
28 - Boston, MA Royale *
29 - Asbury Park, NJ - Stone Pony *
30 - Philadelphia, PA - Brooklyn Bowl Philadelphia *

MAY
1 - Carrboro, NC - Cat’s Cradle *

Saw them play a set of mostly new solo/acoustic/fierce unabashedly queer songs. No idea if the songs will be recorded that way, but they really worked, going ina new direction from what I’d heard before.

Turns out one song I thought was new was from 2014: “Mile High.”

did yall see this:
https://pitchfork.com/news/lydia-loveless-announces-album-shares-video-for-new-song-toothless-watch/

that's great! very classic lydia loveless soaring chorus

Indeed! Looking forward.

been listening to the new one a lot, love it, never could get my arms around the last album

another new one from the upcoming album

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unm3vH9kwW8

Digging the new one right now...

just got tickets to see her at a really cool small venue near my house! she hasn't played Minneapolis (to my knowledge) since i've known about her. so excited!

Yeah, saw here at the start of the year around here -- good show, second time I've seen her. You'll like it!

Really been enjoying her 'secret sessions' monthly song drops this year. This Luigi Tenco cover from the other day is a beauty.

https://lydialoveless.bandcamp.com/track/vedrai

From her FB post about it:

This month’s song is a Luigi Tenco tune called Vedrai, Vedrai.
My friends in Grosseto requested this one on Patreon. One of the best nights of my life was playing at their house with the band ten flipping years ago. We ate and drank so much and it felt like hanging out with family. When I sing this song, it is like being back in a place I’ve really itched to return to.
I hope to do more singing in Italian. I am better at it than speaking the language, that’s for sure.
My friend Jay Gonzalez was so kind to play the piano on this because I was like what the hell are these chords. Amy Turn Sharp recorded my vocals in her engineering debut! My friend Andy Harrison mixed it all together.
RIP Luigi and thanks for the tune. Working on an original over here to maybe pop up in the next couple days, but the move and the state of life has delayed me a bit. I’ll get back in the kitchen soon enough.

Tenco himself is worth learning about:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luigi_Tenco

nice!

and yes luigi is very much worth learning about. my fave luigi song, as definitively recorded by dalida:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxYOfl5rC7g