Rolling Country 2006 Thread

I'd be so happy if more music crits assessed things this way. Hearts.

no i think tim's right, the problem is with hooks. the bands are ok, the sadies especially (i'm not a huge sadies fan, but i think they back up neko pretty well). i think fox confessor is about 3/4 good. but good isn't great, and the 1/4 that isn't even good bogs the rest down. she's idiosyncratic and all, but i can't help liking her best when she treats herself to a real actual tune.

the album also isn't country or even alt-country or anything particularly related to either.

kelly hogan and neko case should have blown the roof off of everything in site. it didnt.

yeah. i still think they need to do a gospel album together. or maybe a collection of girl-group covers. or both.

I don't get this, though. Ten tracks in 34 mintues is a BETTER investment than 14 tracks in 50 minutes including a load of crap. Seems to me this is the length most albums SHOULD be. (I was gonna say most "country" albums, but why limit it to country? Country just tends to have a better grasp of economy than most genres these days.)

Also, fwiw, I've never been much of a fan of other records Radney Foster's been involved in (though maybe that just means I haven't heard enough of them, or I haven't noticed his involvement.) (And Matt is right to point out that Foster's involvement is limited here.)

the only really good song on Radney is the first one. kinda like Stealer's Wheel or something. it's a strange record that has an '80s production esthetic. sort of like a minor Edmunds or Lowe record, I guess--but not as funny, and I don't think Foster writes as well as Lowe. maybe he should just do covers, like Edmunds? I dunno. he's in Nashville, he is a songwriter. no patch on Elizabeth McQueen--they ought to get together.

speaking of Ms. McQueen, I wish I was flying to Texas so I could attend the Pub Rock Hoot Night on the 12th. her SXSW postcard says she has a version of "Cruel to Be Kind" at www.elizabethmcqueen.com/mp3/cruel.mp3

not happy about what's happening at the Scene here. Bill's gonna be missed.

xps

I've read about the comparison of the album having a "Stonesy" sound, but i think that comes more from Don Was' loose, expansive production. The whole record has a nice & gritty, greasy feel to it, and the songs really stick in the brain without being cheap at all. I think it's just a brutally "honest" record. Was's production, again, is top-notch, and Ray Kennedy's engineering is just as good. The musicians are some of the best in the business, too. Most of all, though, Colter really puts her own stamp on this music. Honestly, I can't believe her voice is still this good. In fact, it's even better than her 70s work, in some ways. I guess she aged like a nice bottle of wine. All in all, this is the most impressive set i've heard yet this year. First listen and you're impressed. Three listens and you're blown away. It's a must-but piece, IMO. Great to see her back and so solid.

http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/story?id=1702714&page=1&CMP=OT

Holy goddamn shit! I'm now on my third Marit Larsen track, "Only a Fool," and this one is the country song of the year so far. It'd be too "quirky" or something to ever get country airplay even if country programmers in the U.S. heard it, and I doubt that Marit's trying to get country play, but it's got a banjo or a mandolin or both, a wonderfully catchy rhythm that dominates the start, great hand-clapping; the song drives forward but wiggles sideways at the same time with little twinkletoe steps. And, true to form, the words make it yet another I'm-not-going-back-to-you song, sung in the same happy sly chirp as always: "Well, I say I found the letters you wrote/Mine was the smile and the life that you broke/Mine was the story that you told your friends/Yours were the demons you couldn't defend." Then she goes, "Understand me as of lately I've learned a thing or two," and the twist she puts on "two" could be Miranda Lambert or Natalie Maines. Her voice is a lot smaller than theirs, and I wouldn't say it has a lot of emotional juice - she's not a wailer - but she has a superb instinct for knowing when to insert an extra syllable into a word, when to let another word fall nonchalantly, when to add a momentary, wispy cry.

I'll tell you, the other songs on here will have to be complete dogs for this album not to make my Pazz & Jop ballot. (Assuming I get to hear the album. Amazon doesn't yet know of it, at least in the U.S. Not that I could afford an import album.)

Meanwhile, I'm listening to *I Know You Feel It,* self-released 2004 album by Blazing Country featuring the Lybarger Family, a six-member Missouri family band (i.e, near as I can tell, Blazing Country ARE the Lybarger family -- a mom and a dad and their three sons and one daugher, apparently) discovered on cdbaby (but not LISTENED TO there -- see, that's how much an old-school asshole I am; even with cdbaby bands, I drop them a note and don't listen until I get the CD in my grubby little hands, even though I COULD listen to their music right there on the cdbaby page. You know, I'd rather listen while I'm doing other things but take little notes on the CD cover while the CD's spinning. And not stream a song at a time, which isn't accidental enough and never works like a CD playing through in the background etc etc etc and don't give me shit about it because I've got fingers plugging my ears okay?) Anyway. Blazing Country. Best stuff is either hard/sometimes-fast/somewhat-dark country rock sung by son Dallas(opener "Doin' Time" with tough words and mood worthy of Montgomery Gentry, "Drivin Around Texas With You," maybe "That Left One" which unlike the Bikini Kill obscenity suggested by its title is actually apparently about a guy getting stood Gilbert O'Sullivan style up at the altar) or boppier, poppier, Diddley/Willie & Hand Jive/"Faith"/jitterbug-swing-beat stuff sung by daughter Dana ("Thing Called Love" and "Have I Got Blues for You," both probably a little too lite somehow, and "No More Excuses," which may well be the best song on the album and where Dana Lybarger--who to my eyes looks quite cute and curvy on the cover--comes closest vocally to Natalie/Miranda territory.) I like how these people mix the modern tough-guy redneck rock thing with the cute swing nostalgia; is anybody else doing that?

I dunno, Chuck -- keep the songs on your desktop or in a close to hand iPod and you'll definitely live with them, as I've found. But I understand the comfort of experience.

(This Marit thing Frank mentions is of interest. Scandinavians have a good way around that, I've noticed.)

http://countrymusic.about.com/b/a/250118.htm#more

awards show held in Vegas this spring.

Album of Year nominees:

Rascal Flatts, Feels Like Today
Lee Ann Womack, There's More
Brad Paisley, Time Well Wasted
Gary Allan, Tough All Over
Sugarland, Twice the Speed of Life

enjoying jace everett, so far. it's quite a collection of somewhat off-the-wall guitar effects, interesting guitar chromatics (as in the first song), definitely a '70s pop thing happening; and in my mode of concurrent listening (lately it's been dusty springfield/the latest numero group comp of obscure '70s female singers/the new, beautiful nara leão bossa "nara '67"; and jace/radney foster/jessi colter, partly because they all have cool first names, I guess) I notice that both radney and jace hark back to stiff records, which I find interesting.

xps

I gotta get that Moody Scott record.

I don't know anything much about Moody Scott, just a handful of tracks, but A Woman's Touch is an old favourite.

It'd be in my top 100 favourite singles ever, I think.

I have an extra copy, Edd! I'll send it to you.

So Martin, did Moody have regional hits or something? I never heard of him before I saw his cdbaby page, and haven't really taken time to research him. I'm surprised you even heard of him!

1) the comedy songs dont really work at all, but t hings like goodbye cruel girl sound an awfully like the comedy tracks on brad paisley, except they rock (well kind of rock, in that npr safe way)
2) his voice is really much better here, more supple, softer, subtler, more difficult in dismissing it as a rough imitator of better worse things
3) its really about class, wealth, how to achieve money, and how to lose money--it reminds me of the disappearing middle class, and the ignoring of working/ruling class issues in mainstream country (other examples:iris dement, emmylou harris, mary gauthier) (counter examples: maybe gretchen)
4) its really sad, low key, not sad as melodramatic, but withdrawn and lonely, it is so sure that it will never be happy
5) you dont want what i have is the male equivlent of i may hate myself in the morning, but more self loathing. (the women here come on sleezy/that young thing acts like she needs me bad/but dont look on her lies/with envy in yr eyes/you dont want what i have)--the vocal rising and falling, the edging towards pyrotechincs, barely kept in check are really womacky
6) there is a really good drinking song here--last year seemed to be the year of the drinking for pleasure, drinking as positive release (hicktown, tequilla makes her clothes come off, the paisley sort of, all jacked up, etc) this one actually is one of those track of my tears hank williams classic, with the line drink my heartaches dry, and its angry too, it reminds me v. much of some of the better earlier jason mccoy, a brilliant singer/songwriter who i dont think has broke in america, and who is know doing this trucking themed road album called the roadhammers, i have no idea why he hasnt broken though, hes fucking brilliant.
7) how does everyone think of if they could see me know--i think that it is the strongest vocal performance song of his, i think it has authentic details, and i t hink its really quite astonishing, and it pegs into rodney cowells obscenity prayer quite nicely, and the details about markets, family, and real estate, and even the idea of hobby farming, are excellent (esp. how they relate in the next verse to cocaine, furs, etc---fulks knows how drugs work as american signifers) and it has that great talky middle bit, which reminds me of things like veitnam, but i dont understand how all of this rises towards the end of the narrative--why does he kill his meal ticket, orphan his kids, etc--it doesnt make sense to me (or to him--"power beyond my control drove it down some how", it really confuses me, i dont know if it works, it makes me really meloncholy, but its almost kind of manipulitive.
8) countrier then though is an update of fuck this town, and it has a nice dig to bush, but come on, fulk is the perfect example of the carpet bagging that he is mocking here (a point that bluenecks make...) i also think boston jew (unless its an oblique reference to lomax or smith or one of those fellows that im not getting) reminds me of his line about faggots in fuck this town or the racial implications of white manes bourban
9) another cheating song, fulks is much better in details, the actual mentioning of cheap hotel, all of the details, all of the little things no one else notices, and it reminds me again, of all the details, all the implications, the playing out of illicit fucking, that was all over womack---is this the boys version of that girls text? (four walls and a bed/is all we need/to keep these bodies fed" is an amazing line too, fulks can actually write, and he reminds me of the short stories of indie poets like the silver jews guy or john darnielle.
10) hes playing a role, hes doing anthropology, and sometimes it convinces me to the core, and sometimes it seems cheap showmanship, an dsometimes i feel the same way both at the same time, which really seems to be the central point--love, money, etc are a varration of masquerdaes, but that seems a really banal observation and i dont know why it bothers me, when oldham doesnt...
11) his discussion of actually leaving places, of going from one city to the other, his nomadacy as escape from normalcy, really actually works for me.
12) i think i like fulks, and i think this is his strong album, but it tries too hard to be "country" as opposed to working thru the lyrics/music organically....

i

(yes, I am aware of the absurdity of wandering onto a thread starring Frank Kogan and Chuck Eddy and saying 'hey, read my writing about music!')

Agree with jako upthread about Jessi Colter's voice: weathered without being decimated or elderly, a lot more left than either Bare or Lynn. That said, and this is only after one listen, but so far this doesn't come close to the Bare or Lynn; on most of the tracks it's only the voice that's speaking to me, the songs taking the same in-one-ear-out-the-other trip as much much much recent blues. I can't explain it, especially seeing as how a couple days ago "One Way Out" was doing its work of pouring like glue into my mind and gut. Maybe with me and blues it's either special or it's zero.

A couple of songs, though, reach me: "Starman," and especially "So Many Things," which sounds simultaneously like a lament and an incantation, chords going around and around while her voice quietly lays down its devastating tones. I haven't checked yet as to whether its words have anything to do with devastation, and the three songs that immediately come to mind when I hear this are Pajama Party's "Over and Over," the Dells' "There Is," and Jefferson Starship's "A Child Is Coming," all of which are far more noisy and exuberant than this one, none of which I would think to call devastating, but all three have that sense of reaching up and calling down while chords circle dramatically underneath them. Whatever I mean that; Bowie's "Man Who Sold the World" has the same feel. (Five songs from five different genres.)