Rolling Country 2006 Thread

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.)

And Martin, I will try to read that piece tomorrow.

Natalie Maines may be the best singer in the world when she's cracking her whip. It's she not Gretchen whom Miranda Lambert reminds me of. But you know, this isn't as good as Kerosene. I don't think the problem is the songs per se. "Ready to Run," "Goodbye Earl," and "Sin Wagon" are fabulous - whip crackers all three, but with beauty in 'em too, and the other songs all are decent enough. Somewhere, though, in the arrangements or the approach there's the lure of decorousness. Not sure what's wrong (and it's not that wrong; this is a good album); maybe the voice and style are too appropriate to each song, so each comes off as "what you'd expect for that particular type of song."

I'm not being articulate about this, am I? These women are live wires, but maybe that's them, not their taste, which is merely So Cal country-rock. So something has to jostle them. We'll see what's to come. I'm looking forward to the next one.

But my rudiments of music theory don't extend to my understanding what's happening with close-sung harmonies. And so here's my question: Everly Brothers, and through them Louvins and others, are in the ancestry of this music. Right? Or am I wrong? When I heard "Cathy's Clown," about fifteen years after it came out, this was like finding the Rosetta Stone. "Oh, that's the Beatles, "All I Wanna Do," "Not a Second Time." And then the Byrds drawing from folk, "Wild Mountain Thyme." So where is this coming from? Its insane sweetness was new, but the sound didn't come out of nowhere. (And am I right about "Rush" and "4ever" belonging to this line, or are they from somewhere else? Is there a music theorist in the house?)

I haven't heard the Veronicas yet, so can't speak to that, but as a general quesiton about Beatle/Byrd-esque harmonies and their off-shoots, oh yeah, most definitely. Another significant close harmony source would be The Blue Sky Boys, who don't get the props they deserve, though I think they predate the Louvins.

Also, a singer named Megan Mullins on indie label Broken Bow has a single at #52. Has anybody heard any of these songs? Are they good?

ANOTHER black woman country singer from cdbbaby: Buffalo-born Dionne Chin, more blatantly bluesy and even boogiefied than Miko Marks or Rhonda Towns. First track has rockabilly yelps and almost sounds pub rock; second song has goes light-Celine-Dion-melisma; third song has '80s new wave AOR production and a slight Shania tinge; "House of Broken Love" is a a harder boogie with a dark mood: Dionne "dealing with the devil" like Terri Gibbs in "Somebody's Knockin'"; "Country From My Boots On Up" is about how Music Row only wants to sing blond white girls "bright of eye and under 21" and "from the south"; "I Want It All" ends with soul-sister/gospel backup that sounds a lot like the backup on Mellencamp's *Lonesome Jubilee*; catchy closer has Dionne saying she'll take the wheel when they hit Mobile. Versatile!

and her name is Dionne CHINN (with two n's).

I'm going to dig around for info on Moody Scott in the next few days. And Martin, you the man on soul, seems to me; and I want to read your George Jackson thing...
xps