Rolling country 2007 thread

garth, hmm, the first one, '90, w/ "friends in low places," i always liked because it was a bit more relaxed, pre-mega-success. i guess i think "in pieces" is the best of all of them except the first greatest hits package. one of those guys i wish i could divorce the music from that silly-ass way he always cavorted around on stage and so forth. definitely some kind of genius of assimilationist nashville, oklahoma. give me john anderson any day, though, or even keith whitley.

jackson "jazz album of the year," eh? that's the rub, and what a lot of reviewers just seem to have missed. i was talking about charlie rich, and certainly jackson has affinities. rich always gave you a piece of himself, vocally, though, and jackson remains a bit of a cipher, but i guess i say the less "personality" in jazz-pop these days, perhaps the better. a really over-the-top singer might've ruined "like red."

xps

Here's my Scene stuff:

TOP TEN COUNTRY ALBUMS OF 2006:

1. Alan Jackson – Like Red on a Rose
2. Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins – Rabbit Fur Coat
3. Julie Roberts – Men and Mascara
4. The Wreckers – Stand Still, Look Pretty
5. Blaine Larsen – Rockin’ You Tonight
6. Rosanne Cash – Black Cadillac
7. Dixie Chicks – Taking the Long Way
8. Vince Gill – These Days
9. Toby Keith – White Trash with Money
10. Keith Urban – Love, Pain & the Whole Crazy Thing

TOP TEN COUNTRY SINGLES OF 2006:

1. Faith Hill – “Stealing Kisses”
2. Sara Evans – “Cheatin’”
3. Carrie Underwood – “Before He Cheats”
4. Kenny Chesney – “Summertime”
5. The Wreckers – “Leave the Pieces”
6. Blaine Larsen – “I Don’t Know What She Said”
7. Toby Keith – “Get Drunk and Be Somebody”
8. Billy Currington – “Must Be Doin’ Somethin’ Right”
9. Dixie Chicks – “Not Ready to Make Nice”
10. Julie Roberts – “Men and Mascara”

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST MALE VOCALISTS OF 2006:

1. Alan Jackson
2. Toby Keith
3. Vince Gill

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST FEMALE VOCALISTS OF 2006:

1. Julie Roberts
2. Neko Case
3. Carrie Underwood

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST LIVE ACTS OF 2006:

1. Tim McGraw/Faith Hill
2. Dierks Bentley
3. Kenny Chesney

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST SONGWRITERS OF 2006:

1. Lori McKenna
2. Arlis Albritton
3. Robert Lee Castleman

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST DUOS, TRIOS OR GROUPS OF 2006:

1. The Wreckers
2. Dixie Chicks
3. Deadstring Bros.

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST NEW ACTS OF 2006:

1. The Wreckers
2. Blaine Larsen
3. Jamey Johnson

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST OVERALL ACTS OF 2006:

1. Alan Jackson
2. Julie Roberts
3. Rosanne Cash

I'm sure you guys probably talked about this last year, but thoughts on "Brand New Girlfriend"? I think it's great: I love the unabashed heart-on-his-sleeve giddiness, but I can also see someone could find it annoying. None of you voted for it. A little surprised that Frank was the only one who voted for Taylor Swift's "Tim McGraw," too. Not surprised at all that we all seem to agree on the excellence of "Before He Cheats."

I'd like to hear more country this year. I didn't really hear anything until late 2005, and even last year I probably only heard about a dozen or so songs, not including the Dixie Chicks record, which I thought was just okay.

"bible song" is kinda brilliant, though.

so I gotta give a listen to Jason Michael Carroll's "Waitin' in the Country" promo. anyone heard it yet? beyond "Alyssa Lies"? he does a duet with our new Star, Jewel...

5 Country Albums I liked in 2006, in no particular order:

1. Neko Case - Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
2. Alan Jackson - Like Red On a Rose
3. Rosanne Cash - Black Cadillac
4. Hannah Montana - Hannah Montana Soundtrack
5. Dixie Chicks - Taking the Long Way Around

Five in one year means it's a pretty good year for me for country music. Most years have one country permanent addition to my iPod, if any at all. Unclear if Hannah Montana will be a permanent fixture (though 'Best of Both Worlds' will likely be) or Rosanna Cash, though her album strikes me as beautiful at the moment. The other 3 are no doubt permanent additions.

Amazing moments from these five albums:
1. "John couldn't read it (John couldn't read it) / Get on repeat it / John couldn't read it / Holy, Holy to the Lord" - can you hear Johnny B. Goode?
2. "at the end of the road is another town where the people want to hear a man who sings the blues."
3. "it was a black cadillac that drove you away -- one of us gets to go to heaven, one has to stay in hell" -- can you hear this and not think of joni's yellow taxi?
4. "Living two lives is... a - little weerd!"
5. " And how in the world / Can the words that I said / Send somebody so over the edge / That they'd write me a letter / Saying that I better shut up and sing / Or my life will be over."

---

Actually, Frank gave me a reason why Hannah Montana isn't country, but I wonder if anyone can give me some reasons why she is? Or could be? I'm curious, outside of the television show (in which she's called a hillbilly regularly), why I'd think there was something countryish about her.

the one with jewel is totally bleh--"no good in goodbye." the best one is maybe "honky tonk friends," about a guy who hangs out with his suburban neighbors and his co-workers and even with his Godly Friends (steeple-people), but who only really loves his h.t. friends.

he gets that macho astringent deep baritone slide up to nasality quite well, and the title track, and especially "sleep when i'm dead" rock pretty good--the latter is, like, about 4 songs all jammed into one, with some amazing twists and turns and that great guitar lick. "anywhere u.s.a" was already done by jason aldean and many others--some of this is big & rich, too, he almost raps, it's a typically wordy nashville country album. not bad!

Come to think of it, Toby Keith comes close. (And I haven't even heard his early albums, so it's possible he even surpasses MG.) And Craig Finn might come close if you count Lifter Puller stuff I guess. Who else?? Pink has four CDs on my shelf, but I can't say I love any of them. Field Mob have three; third one not great. Um...
Actually, the Dixie Chicks would be up in top five or so, probably. (Oh wait...Lil Wayne! Trick Daddy! Brooks & Dunn, though I only even know three '00s albums by them -- guess I need to research backwards from Steers and Queers. Gore Gore Girls, though they only have two albums and an EP. Eminem's off the list by now... and I might be starting to lose track of Lil Wayne and Trick Daddy.)

I need to give Jason Michael Carrol another shot (and had planned to; was just procrastinating.) I'd taken him for something of a wuss on first listen. (Not that being a wuss is necessarily always bad.)

Saturday, May 5, 2007: George Strait, Alan Jackson, Sara Evans, Jason Aldean, Eric Church, Willie Nelson, Lucinda Williams, Neko Case, Robert Earl Keen, Richie Furay, Chris Hillman & Herb Pederson, David Serby, Earl Scruggs, Nickel Creek, Yonder Mountain String Band, The Grascals, The John Cowan Band, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, Riders in the Sky, Red Steagall, Waddie Mitchell, Sons of the San Joaquin, Cowboy Nation.

Sunday, May 6, 2007: Kenny Chesney, Brooks & Dunn, Sugarland, Gary Allan, Pat Green, Emmylou Harris, Kris Kristofferson, Raul Malo, Junior Brown, Drive by Truckers, Alejandro Escovedo, Railbenders, Ricky Skaggs, Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver, Marty Stuart, The Del McCoury Band, Abigail Washburn with the Sparrow Quartet featuring Ben Sollee, Sasey Driessen and Bela Fleck, The Flatlanders (Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Joe Ely, Butch Hancock), Garrison Keillor, Baxter Black, Cowboy Celtic, Don Edwards, and Katy Moffat.

Whoah.

http://cdbaby.com/cd/lastcallgirls

The border-jigging sounds pretty good; makes the music more rich than the Nancy solo album I heard last year. But the Mollys worked with a wider emotional range, though, I think. (I.e.--they could be pretty dark.) In all cases, though, I'm realizing that Nancy probably doesn't really have enough vocal presence for me -- She's a competent singer, but kind of dull. It would take a better singer than her for me to decide how good a songwriter she is. But she does seem to surround herself with fairly lively musician friends.

I'd say "Callin' Baton Rouge," "What She's Doing Now," "Papa Loved Mama," "Two Of A Kind Workin' On A Full House," and maybe "That Summer," and maybe "Ain't Goin' Down (Til The Sun Comes Up)"
(and probably one or two more) come pretty damn close though.

i also got a best of gene pitney for 6 bucks, which has been the exten t of my record buying this trip, havent listened to it fully, but planning on doing that tomorrow or monday (tonite being the super fancy bday dinner)

(though i did find a copy of carnival strippers, a relvetory, complicated, and proto2ndwavefemminist book of women hardned by love, the road, and male lust--there is a country opus, a hillbillu opera waiting to be written about it, and it made me wonder, what did carnival strippers listen to in 1972, on their circitous way around the country, what did they strip to?)

also outside the country vein, the last episode of studio 60. had the christian singer harriet being offered the role of anita pallenberg in a rolling stone movie, and her joking that tammy wynettr should have been offered, it says alot when tammy is a joke and anita pallenberg is the best role a woman can hope to play.

over the rhine -- matt cibula who loves them probably thinks i'm always trying hard not to like these americanists, but actually just the opposite is true. of course i want to like them: they come from cincinnatti or someplace like that and their name refers to germany i suppose and i've been obsessed with the german cincannatti thing ever since i saw a book that i assume was a history of the city when i was a kid called was du ever im zizinnatti or something like that (richard riegel, please to come here and correct my spelling). thing is, over the rhine have never grabbed me, not once, not even for a song. i kind of figured that their new best-of CD would play down their amorphousness, but sadly no such luck dudes.

royal trux - interesting. i have a prejudice against these people in part because they're one of those bands (like disco inferno -- who may or may not actually exist in real life -- and gary numan) who seemingly have an extremely rabid and obsessed and deluded cult of people i can't otherwise identify on ILM who think they're the greatest artists in the universe, which may or may not be amusing but is definitely way beyond ridiculous. the one album i got all the way through by them before struck me as a shitty version of black crowes, more or less. (it was one of their mid/late '90s "sellout" albums i guess; i think i tried listening to one of their early noisier records once and it seemed completely forgettable even as background sound, at least at the time. i'm willing to concede i may have underrated both of those records though.) anyway, the new one western extermintator has some okay blues guitar jam parts (in "rat will kill") and one song that sounds like hanoi rocks drowning in your bathtub ("balls to pass") and an opening dark gypsy waltz that you might like more than me if you like tom waits or nick cave more than me. so...some of it, at least, is not bad. but mostly the music tends to muffle and distance itself into lifelessness.

cloud cult -- as country as modest mouse if not ugly casanova, which means, well, a little bit country at least. i like this! at least so far! i just don't know how much! they are an indie band from minnesota and have actual songs with words that seem to make sense, and hooks and a good singer and decent beat, but mostly melodies melodies melodies. and there's intersting things going on musically in a modest mouse type way; one of these days i'll pinpoint why i kinda like those guys. so far "the girl underground" is my favorite song, then "2x2x2" and "alien christ," but i have only just begun.

the mooney suzuki - i liked their previous record, the mainstream hard rock one where they finally came to terms with their inner eddie money for an entire album. new album's lamer, and seemingly a deadhead hippie (= roots, sort of) move overall, though the jokey drug spiel "good ol' alchohol" is a decent commander cody type joke. if i had an ipod i'd probably put it on there and chuck the rest, though i'd be intersted if somebody hears something here i don't.

eddie money - covers of great '60s songs like "expressway to your heart" and "land of a thousand dances" and "good lovin'" and "jenny take a ride" and two by the foundations plus james brown, ray charles, sam & dave, etc. which by now means people who buy country records might end up buying this too. so far seems kind of watered down, but we'll see. better than mooney suzuki's CD probably. a cool photo of eddie at 15 in his garage band the grapes of wrath inside.

Water Ostanek ("Canada's Polka King and Three Time Grammy Winner" -- he does the odd numbered selections, which sometimes have slightly more intriguing song titles, likke "Hawaiian Polka" and "My Beautiful Slovenia Waltz") and Gaylord Kancnik ("Michigan Polka Hall of Fame inductee", who does the even numbered selections), Polkas United -- Consistently lively dance music behind consistently repressed singing that refuses to acknowledge that rock'n'roll, country, blues, jazz, etc, ever happened. Which might not be bad if said singing had a Polish or German accent (or if its pre-rock pop inflections had some distinction otherwise), but it doesn't.

http://paperthinwalls.com/singlefile/item?id=406

As for Over the Rhine, Chuck, that's a section of downtown Cincinnati that used to be a nice German part of the city and then after whiteflight days of the '50s and '60s turned into pretty much a horrible slum. It might be different now--I lived there in 2002-2003, what a weird place that was, beautiful and in many ways fascinating, a once-major city all sunk in on itself--so that area might be in the throes of urban renewal by now. The German elements in Zinzinnati weren't as obvious by the time I got there, but you could still feel it. Then there's a whole side of town that's settled by people from eastern Ky. and Tenn., the "west side," I think, the city is separated by a big ridge. Where King Records was is just a run-down slum, not much different from where Stax was in Memphis, except you ate "chili" instead of weird tamales and barbecue. Maybe they're changing all that, too. As the band Over the Rhine, never could figure out what the fuss was, boring.

as for almost-country-why-not, Ron Sexsmith. his new one I've tried to like, I mean I like it a little bit and I respect its obvious sincerity and craft, but he's just not much of a singer. He sounds a bit like Jackson Browne, which isn't too bad, and he also sounds uncannily like Ray Davies in spots. he hits the notes but he lacks drama. And the songs are good, but there's just an extra-X element lacking that could take any one of them from OK into really good. he does one about being bummed out by hearing Leadbelly as backdrop for a bookstore ambience kinda thing, and OK, but the obvious riposte is that *his* music does exactly the same thing, it sort of murmurs in that genteel way. Still, he obviously has something, but doesn't in my book deserve the praise he's gotten from lots of people, like, er, No Depression...guy there says his work "not only echoes but rivals that of the Kinks at their most exquisite," but I don't hear it. It's *not* exquisite, is the point, but rather workaday. Maybe I need to be in the right mood, like buying hundreds of dollars worth of books and magazines in Borders while eating a five-dollar muffin and drinking coffee. Plus the Kinks at their best were endearingly crass and Sexsmith doesn't seem to want to ever commit anything so energetic to disc.

I lived there from Kindergarten to 4th Grade, so I guess around 1965 to 1969 or so. Don't remember it much (just like everything else at that time in my life), but the one time I went back to the city in the mid '80s to drop in on Richard R., the greenness and hilliness of its vistas reminded me a lot of Germany around Mainz and Bad Kreuznach, where I'd been stationed in the Army. I should go back again sometime (to both places.) And I should track down that book.

http://www.biblio.com/books/8788803.html

http://www.amazon.com/Vas-Ever-Zinzinnati-Dick-Perry/dp/0517240564/sr=1-1/qid=1168715521/ref=sr_1_1/103-7550218-1307818?ie=UTF8&s=books

ohio is a great fucking record because karin is a great singer and songwriter. their followup drunkard's prayer was a conscious pullback away from karin being in charge of the band; it saved their relationship and linford's fragile ego, but at the cost of her truly being able to be free to cut loose. it was boring and i said so. i saw them on both tours and the last time (after they had supposedly gotten back on track with each other) there was a palpable tension between them onstage, no adoring looks, no chemistry, no nothing. it was really weird. so anyway.

it sounds a bit like the new teddy thompson but thompson is much more beautiful.

As slightly country-inflected indie rock goes, I'm liking Tigers & Monkeys' Loose Mouth more. Singer is Shonali Bhowmik, formerly of Atlanta-based-I-believe better-than-Breeders mid/late '90s Breeders-like art-pop-rock band Ultrababyfat, and she sings with a bit of a drawl these days. That's the country part, which is negligible but still undeniably there somewhere (and as I recall they list country as an influence) and Shonali also has a knack for repeating non-word syllables musically, in a way that sort of reminds me of Frank Blank from the Pixies a little albeit in a way I can actually stomach. But the songs that are hitting me on the album ("You Know," "Rave On," "Fire Escape" which Shonali sez is the only way out and hot hot hot, "The Ballad of the Smoking Gun" which is not a ballad) are more like if PJ Harvey (in blues-rock mode) was actually fun, and they have a decent push and bounce for indie rock, maybe even an okay one for non-indie rock. Most of the other tracks are less good though, but I haven't taken the album out of the CD changer yet. Here is their myspace if you want to judge for yerself:

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=6078986

Or maybe he just needs a better band! Somebody else figure it out.

"The Ballad of The Smoking Gun" on Tigers & Monkeys' album has a very cool (and very blatant) Ricky Wilson type guitar twang making it dance. "From Where I Stood" is a nice alt-countryish slow one.

(and p.s: no, smashmouth really aren't very good in the first place.)