Rolling Country 2008 Thread

I'm one of those who neglected the Creedence crate-digging (because I tethought I knew their whole range just from the singles, because I neglected etc), so can't compare, but the CDs sound fine, for CDs, and a bunch of good bonus tracks: I didn't have room to deal with more of 'em, not and also tell my tale of why non-bonus mavens should bother, the 'why' waiting in plain sight for me and others, all these years. (Tried to include the bonus tracks that fit with the theme of dealing with historical tags, dust etc)Also some bonus filler of course. Yeah, re Lucinda and Kathleen, I love how some derivitive artists can give bonus value beyond the original's limitations (you could say Mellencamp's "The Night Jesus Left Birmingham" templates Prine, but certainly has a bounce Prine doesn't, preferring to keep the cuteness in the writing and the vocal--why can't we have all three? You could also say *some* of Prine's songs go deeper than some of Mellen's, but even if that were true, still Mellen's pop smarts, plus the same concerns etc, can make him preferred listening at times, even in their mutual decline).

also, "original" ha: Prine's whole thing comes from alt universe's tasteful ageing of early 60s Bobby D. (except for the part that comes from his early Chicago colleague, Steve Goodman, though maybe they influenced each other)

So, I:

1. Decided Holly Golightly's new album isn't really that good after all.
2. Decided the Junior League Band album isn't really all that much better than the Joey & Rory album.
3. Wrote this about Kid Rock:

http://blog.rhapsody.com/2008/10/maybe-its-about.html

With some of the same appeal, ‘tude-wise, but with retro more in the music than the lyric, and at the opposite end of the financial spectrum, comes now Backyard Tire Fire, telling tales out of school, of daring dumbass robberies and backdoor luv, various other blind and/or bold ambitions,and yall check their music at
http://www.backyardtirefire.com I’d say start with the earlier, no-budget EP tracks, barefoot skiffle with rueful-to-absurdist butt basically hopeful assertion, also the live sets linked from there to archive.org, where they crank it up, and then the new album gets a bit studio (somebody got some $ somewhere, by cracky), but it’s still theyum. Here’s a show preview I wrote, slightly bleeped for supposed “family newspaper”:

Backyard Tire Fire’s got catchy, itchy tunes, and talking points to sing: “I’m sick of debt. I wanna be out of it.” But leader Ed Anderson knows he’s well-nourished: “I only cry when my Mama’s sick. Otherwise, I can handle my sh**.” He’s also ambitious: “I wanna be be Tom Petty!” Then again, their Petty-est epic is about giving and getting a local non-hero’s greeting: “How the hell did you get back here?!” Live sets spill rowdy boondock beans; the new studio album, “Places We’ve Lived”, burns electric blue atmosphere (and tires).

Most pointless country reissue of the year might be Love Is Overtaking Me by Arthur Russell, maddeningly dull and quiet small-voiced singer-songwriter demos on which the semifamous New York post-punk dance music auteur and cult hero wears a cowboy hat on the cover. I'm a big fan of his Dinosaur L and Dinosaur and Loose Jointz and "Let's Go Swimming" stuff (almost all of it collected on the 2004 Soul Jazz set The World of Arthur Russell, always have been, even have "Kiss Me Again" on a red vinyl 12 inch, but this stuff is even more embarrassing to his legacy than those avant-minimal new age instrumental doodles or whatever they were that came out a few years ago. I really wish people would just let the poor guy rest in peace.

A surprise that came in the mail the other day was a DVD plus three previously unrelased song EP set from Big N Rich called Super Galactic Fan Pack 2. No idea when I'll get around to watching the DVD; I have a feeling John Rich's face will just want to make me throw things at the TV screen, so it may be a while. But they go two for three on the EP; I like both rockers. The ballad "Find a Heart" strikes me as one of sappiest and the most tedious songs they've ever done, though there's been some major competition in the last couple years.

Toby dumber than I hoped:

http://www.cmt.com/news/country-music/1596198/toby-keith-registering-as-independent-voter.jhtml

Some (but not all) ILX posters less adventerous than I hoped

Why is The Genre Of 'Country' so maligned?

If only I could spell and correct my typos

Obama listening to Phil Vassar as much as you'd hope:

"But everybody’s screaming up the ladder
Gonna get the attention of the man on top
Make it louder, shake and rock
It might just come tumbling down
Spread all that wealth around"

What a bunch of elitists!

(Great CD by the way, just got it, thanks for tip Xhuxk.)

robo-calls in Virginia 2008

Hank Williams Jr for McCain

Ralph Stanley for Obama

Taylor Swift '08: The Hype, Anticipation & Appreciation Begins Right Here

Ha ha, I guess I haven't looked at this thread for a couple weeks, and I was just re-listening to the Phil Vassar CD yesterday and realizing he's a socialist that future Nashville star Joe the Plumber would hate, but Dr. Phil beat me to it, damn. (Also decided that Vassar's CD had more mush than I'd remembered, so not a Top 10 candidate, not even close, but it's still good.)

Better than I would have predicated: New Billy Currington, new Trace Adkins.

Me on the new Hank III:

http://www.spin.com/reviews/hank-iii-damn-right-rebel-proud-sidewalk

Me on Too Slim and the Tail Draggers and Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band (the latter of which do several songs applicable to the new depression economy):

http://blog.rhapsody.com/2008/10/maybe-it-just-m.html

Reviews of new Leann Womack I wrote that got killed for space somewhere:

LEE ANN WOMACK
CALL ME CRAZY ***
MCA Nashville

Lee Ann Womack’s sound has long walked a line between older country and modern Nashville’s poppier proclivities, and on 2005’s There’s More Where That Came From, the synthesis hit paydirt: songs crafted catchily enough for radio, but with a ‘70s-retro sheen that struck insiders as classy enough to win her a stack of awards. Her belated followup likewise piles on trad trappings: gospel piano, bluegrass mandolin, sweet strings, weepy Wurlitzer. It starts out strong – the forlorn opener, about a suitor who only dials her drunk, will break hearts for sure. But though the bare-bones mating of pretty melody with puzzling lyric in “The Bees” provides momentary mystery, most of the rest settles for generic good taste; by the end, Womack is blatantly cloning her 2000 smash “I Hope You Dance.” Tastefulness, we’re reminded, can turn tepid quick.

(Vassar's "Love is a Beautiful Thing" -- first hit song to use the word "vestibule" since "My Dingaling" by Chuck Berry, I believe, not to mention one of the best wedding day songs since Chuck Berry's "You Never Can Tell" -- is still a shoo-in for my top ten singles list, however.)

About the Lee Ann Womack album, I was struck most by "The Bees" as well. It's a strange song, at first it was just the chorus about bees that I heard but then I realized there's this whole story in there. In my review of the album (on PopMatters) I tried to pin the story down like this, but I know it doesn't capture everything:

"The song tells a lot quickly. The main character’s mom ran away, her father beat her, and now she sits on the front porch thinking back on those times, listening to the bees buzzing and thinking of what their families are like."

From the front page of today's NY Times, in a (not all the revelatory in terms of tellus us stuff we didn't already know) article on the differences between Obama/Biden rallies and McCain/Palin rallies: "The D's bounce to blaring folk-rock and Motown (Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder) and the R's counter with country-pop (including Dolly Parton's "9 to 5") and arena rock (AC/DC)."

I guess the R's missed the part about "9 to 5" being a socialist if not Marxist song ("Nine to five, yeah/They got you where they want you/There’s a better life/And you think about it, don’t you?/It’s a rich man’s game/No matter what they call it/And you spend your life/Puttin’ money in his wallet.")

Also, I agree that some Springsteen counts as "folk-rock," but I somehow doubt they're blasting, say, Nebraska at the rallies.

(By the way, Phil Vassar's album still has a shot at my 2008 country top ten, just not my Pazz & Jop ten ten, which is what I meant a few posts up.)

Ann Powers in (today's, I think) LA Times about Nickelback/Hinder-type "flyover rock" and its relationship to country. She quotes me speculating (maybe stupidly) off the top of my head about Sarah Palin's musical tastes, which I'm not entirely sure is directly related to the topic at hand (and I talked about a lot of other stuff when she interviewed me, too, which she doesn't quote me on), and I'm not sure she ever convincingly makes the case about the country/post-grunge connection (never mentions Travis Tritt's and Jack Ingram's Nickelback and Hinder covers), and I get the idea she might be in denial about the elephant-in-the-room vocal influence of Eddie Vedder (who she was always a huge fan of, and mysteriously goes unmentioned), but what the heck, I can't complain really:

http://www.calendarlive.com/music/cl-ca-flyover2-2008nov02,0,3826251.story

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog/2008/11/flyover-rock-wh.html

I like the new Nickelback album, by the way -- at least a lot more than I expected to. Wrote a review for Rolling Stone, of all places. But I still do hate that kind of singing. In fact, Lalena just came into the room and told me that, if Jamey Johnson was singing rock music, I'd hate him for having a similar kind of voice. Which might be true, since I usually haven't even been a huge fan of country people (i.e., Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings) doing the low sodden anchored-to-the-bottom-of-the-ocean-of-gloom thing. (Lalena correctly says though that I'm a huge fan of Merle Haggard, who despite his deep bariton-or-whatever to me seems in a completely category, though I'm not sure I can explain why right now. His voice doesn't drag at all to me, never has; am I nuts?)

Frank Kogan says the Jamey Johnson album has too many slow drones for him, and I do admit that, after peaking unbelievably high right off the bat with my favorite song of the year "High Cost of Living," it takes longer than I'd thought at first to get its gears going again, but once it hits "In color" and especially the almost goth "When The Last Cowboy's Gone" at the halfway point, I'd say it cooks pretty well despite all the droning dolor. So, still my album of the year, at least for now.

Been going back and listening again to other '08 country albums I like, too. Carter's Chord and Woodbox Gang totally hold up, and increasingly seem to be sewing up their spots in my yea-end top ten. Trent Willmon (whose proof of God's existence song sounds even stupider months down the line) and, most sadly and surprisingly, Dolly Parton (whose squeaking can be really annoying to be honest), sound a lot thinner than I'd thought in my head; they're both slipping drastically down my list. Keith Anderson sounds better than both of them to me now, even though his Sunday morning in America song only seems to care about certain kinds of Sunday mornings in certain parts of America; so does Kathleen Edwards. Chuck Wicks's album sounded really marginal, and Chris Cagle not a whole lot better than that -- both might be on their way out of my apartment. I think it's possible I've always had a tendency to overrate albums that come out in the beginning of the year, just out of, um, hopefulness or something, and some of the ones from back then seem to falling by the wayside now that I go back and revisit them. The new albums by Trace Adkins (not out til November), Toby Keith, and Billy Fucking Currington (the latter of which I never would have guessed) just have way more memorable hooks and interesting songs and stronger singing than Willmon/Cagle/Wicks, across the board.

(By "So does Kathleen Edwards" I mean her album also sounds a lot better to me now than Dolly's or Trent Willmon's, not that she only cares about certain kinds of Sunday mornings.)

And actually, I don't even really think that Jamey Johnson, as a whole, is all that depressive or soporific, or addicted to the drone. The only song where Jamey really goes into Chad Kroeger vocal mode, really, is the title track, which is still pretty good, and what's most goth about "When The Last Cowboy's Gone" isn't so much the tempo (though it is pretty slow) as the belfry bells and open space at the beginning, which is really beautiful. And the song that most falls into an inexorable drone is also, by far, the best song on the album. And a bunch of the songs, in the second and fourth quarters of the album especially, are actually fairly upbeat pop-country, just a much higher grade of pop-country than the norm. And I'd say Johnson, like Haggard, can actually give his singing a lightness and sprightliness that keeps him from feeling like he's got a ball-and-chain tied to his ankle, which to my ears Cash and Jennings weren't always all that great at. Curious what other people think about this, though (assuming anyone's still out there.)

I've only listened to Jamey once and it was all mixed up on MySpace, but it did sound kind of slow and drony to me and I didn't like it as much as his first album. THAT SAID, I like his voice a lot--but then, I've always liked Eddie Vedder's voice too. They seem legitimately intense--not so much emotionally intense, but they have an intensity of tone that seems to bore its way into my forehead. Plus they have distinctive vowel shapings. Now I grant you, I could use the Kogan rule to say that these descriptions could also apply to singers I hate, like Chad Kroeger. But maybe since I grew up with Eddie and I can sing along to all the songs I find his singing more amusing than pretentious, and Jamey just sounds really good, like he's chewing his words. Almost like Rihanna?

But Haggard's not really like them. He seems to dance around his songs, even the sad ones, like "If We Make It Through December." Sometimes I can imagine him in a supper club, like Bobby Darin or somebody. Maybe Jamey's got some of that, so I'll go back and listen to him on MySpace again when I have a chance.

I can't imagine Jamey Johnson singing in a supper club (and I do hear that in Haggard), but I do hear some lightness in his singing. Maybe it's really about the material, though. He sings "Mowing Down the Roses" in that same deep growling kind of voice that he does the first couple songs but the humor in the song balances it out. The album is constructed to leaven out the pain, without ever leaving it behind. So the darkest songs give way to more ruminative ones, plus familiar cover songs that are similar in nature and a joke song ("Women") that's really a loneliness song. Not to mention "In Color" standing in the middle - I think its presence there is somehow the key to all this, the way it takes this personal-pain thing and addresses it as something universal, as a radio single.

I'm getting away from his singing per se, I know, but I think it's all connected - his singing might strike me as too broody if every single song was like, say, "Angel". The mood of the songs is more varied than it seems at first, since they all tie into that 'lonesome song' theme. I haven't heard the previous version of the album (mentioned somewhere upthread), I'd be curious to know how the different songlist affects what I'm talking about.

Strangely, "Mowing Down Roses" (which I know a lot of people love, and which I certainly love in theory) and "Mary Go Round" (which I also love in theory, though it really isn't anywhere near as good as its spiritual role model, Glen Campbell's "Where's the Playground Susie") both made me impatient to sit through when I played the album yesterday. But yeah, the album is definitely more varied that it seems at first. And it's kind of neat he saves what might be the prettiest song ("Stars in Alabama") and funniest songs ("Women" and "Somewhere Between Jennings and Jones") for the end.

You guys are both right about Merle Haggard's singing. He's got a lot of Tin Pan Alley pop in there -- not to mention jazz, obviously. So he dances in ways these other guys (Johnson included, but definitely Jennings and Cash) don't.

I much prefer Chad Kroeger to Eddie Vedder, who I always thought was ridiculous and basically unlistenable. I much prefered Scott Weiland to Vedder, too. (Still do, actually.) They both bring Vedder's bullshit down to earth for me. Though I may well still prefer Vedder to Scott Stapp.

Don't tell Jamey, but he's now shelved between Jewel and Jones.

Ha ha, on my CD shelf he's in between Sarah Johns and Linton Kwesi Johnson.

Chris Cagle promo best-of from late December-ish holds up much better than his January-ish actual (third, I think) album. Heidi Newfield album still sounding really good; George Strait album from this year sounding better than I'd remembered, but then I probably always underestimate him. (Really love "Brothers of the Highway," very atypical-for-George Southern rock about big trucks made in Detroit. Has he ever made any song so blatantly rock before?)

...That's "Southern rock" as in Marshall Tucker, though, fwiw, not like Blackfoot or Black Oak Arkansas somebody. So it's not all that rock, if you're not George Strait. And the more or listen to the rest of the album, the more I remember that the reason that I underestimate the guy so much is that he's so fucking boring so much of the time (even when he does Western Swing, for Crissakes), and honestly, this album has plenty of that, too. So yeah, really, it's just about as pretty-good as I figured a few months ago. (Which is still better than I would have figured, before I had heard the album.)

Voted at 11 a.m.; only four people ahead of us in line. New York still has the old lever-pull machines (only state that still does, apparently), but it was still easy.

Rollingstone.com Song of the Day: Phil Vassar, "This Is My Life":

http://new.music.yahoo.com/blogs/rs_sotd/758/song-of-the-day-phil-vassar-this-is-my-life/

Went back and listened to these 2008 albums:

Ashton Sheppherd -- Consistently pleasant sound; indistiguishable songs that still don't stick, except bluesy "Whiskey Won the Battle." Sasha Frere-Jones still had this album in his tentative year-end overall top ten last time I checked (though behind Taylor Swift, which I still haven't heard.) It may well not make my country Top 30.

Hayes Carrl -- Catchy songs sound catchier, and dull sounds sound duller, than I'd remembered, which means it's more or less as good but not-good-enough as I thought. Tom Waits cover and left-me-for-Jesus song irritated me less than I expected them to.

Alan Jackson -- Just hits for a really low batting average, whiffs way too many times, despite a few songs (especially the bologna on white bread one) I still like a lot.

Amanda Shaw -- Went in expecting to be disappointed, and was happy not to be. Falls kind of flat when it tries to get funky, but otherwise her band really carries her -- the Zeppelin rip is almost as rocking at Demi Lovato's Zep rip, the fiddle jam hoedowns are consistently energetic and catchy, and the prettier poppier songs ("Pretty Runs Out," "Garden Of Eden") still grab me. A January release, so I may have overrated it a little after the early winter release drought, but I didn't overrate at much as I thought I might have. Good shot at my year-end country top ten still (though not Pazz & Jop.)

James McMurtry on now; liking it a lot more than Hayes Carrl. Just sounds tougher and more obsessive. Pretty great music for Election Day, it turns out. (For instance "Cheney's Toy," which I'd thought was kind of corny and obvious when the album came out.)

Non country stuff, fwiw: Kill Rock Stars Raincoats-type off-kilter Northwest Corridor politically correct possibly vegan overweight biracial lesbian trio with violin the New Bloods holds up way better than I expected (and given that description I was really surprised I liked the thing in the first place); so does Ashlee Simpson, though the first half of her album really kills the draggy second half. Both have a shot at my Pazz & Jop list. Lil Mama doesn't -- more of a chore than I expected to get through, especially when she tries to be hard or serious and just winds up boring me in the process, though when she starts getting lovey-dovey r&b-ballady toward the end (in the song where the guy wants to swim with her for instance), she sounds suprisingly good. (As does "Lip Gloss," still.)

(Well, the hit single on Ashton However You Spell Her Last Name's album is good too, obviously. My main point is that I still think there is something really samey sounding about the album, even above and beyond the Nashville norm. And not in a good way, even though I basically like how she sounds.)

(And I guess what I'm saying about Hayes Carrl is that, compared to McMurtry -- or probably, say, Chris Knight, not to mention Eric Church, to name a couple people more or less in his aesthetic neighborhood -- he comes off kind of like a wuss. Except when he doesn't. But he comes off wussier way more often than I wish he did.)

Also, didn't mention Ross Johnson's Most Of... album from this year, which still amazes me. Pazz & Jop shoo-in; curious whether anybody else who's heard it (is Edd Hurt still out there?) thinks its intermittent rockabilly quotient should qualify or disqualify it from a country list. I'm still undecided about that pressing issue, myself.

Okay, initial Virginia and Pennsylvania results in maybe an hour and a half. Guess I'll kill some more time now by making a sandwich.

(And sometimes Carrl's wussiness is actually really likeable -- in "Beaumont," for instance. But generally I wish he'd cultivate his non-wussy mode -- e.g., "Bad Liver and a Broken Heart," "Faulkner Street," etc. -- more. Worst song, I think: "Don't Let Me Fall.")

Ross's rockabilliness makes him at least as country as Phil Vassar. Or, for that matter, David Banner, who I seem to remember had a sizable country voting bloc a couple years ago. If Most of was a Yazoo comp called Creepy Uncles of Memphis or something, there'd be no question.

John Rich (doing "I Walk The Line") and Hank Williams Jr, seen on TV performing for ignorami and bigots and maybe even a couple well-meaning good people I just disagree with in Arizona last night, are presumably not dancing in the streets this morning.

Sugarland etc.'s version of "Life in a Northern Town" (also now included on a pointlessly expanded-by-four-songs new major label version of the Little Big Town album from last year) sounded really good the morning after the election for some reason. Maybe that JFK line? I dunno. (Sugarland album as a whole sounds better than I would've guessed now too, a few months down the line. Real nice guitar solo in "What I'd Give" playing now as I type.)

Just figured out "God Bless America (Pat Macdonald Must Die)" by James McMurtry sounds like "Jungle Work" by Warren Zevon. And "Faulkner Street" by Hayes Carrl sounds like "The Wanderer" by Dion. Sort of, in both cases.

Alejandro Escovedo – Why did I think this sounded so rocking a few months back? I get pretty good recall on the songs, in terms of mostly recognizing them when they come on, but the sound is a lot weaker than I thought, and Alejandro is just not a very compelling singer or songwriter, period. He has an okay band, I guess. But hardly a great one.

Mechanical Bull – Good songs, more demo-like and laid-back and unduly subdued than I let on when I was loving this early in the year. The guy’s songs are better than the girl’s. But even his would be better if he gave them to an actual band, with an actual production budget.

Trailer Choir – Less high-larius than I thought. Also more pop-punk in the country pop-rock than I’d prefer; played it back to back with Big N Rich’s new 3-song EP, and this has better cornball punchlines I guess but B&R totally kill them in terms of rock chops and singing chops (even in B&R’s sappy self-help ballad). Also used to think Trailer Choir’s country-rap opener wasn’t up to their other three songs, but now I’m starting to think the other three aren’t much better than the country-rap. They’re all kinda cute, though.

James Dunn – Man, his songs and singing are never as interesting as the guitar playing, are they? Somehow, I don’t think a singer-songwriter album is supposed to work that way. (See also Escovedo.) Lots of really meh material. Favorite is still the closer, “Til The Sun Comes Up.” Where he slimes out like he wants to be the Birthday Party or Gun Club or somebody.

Sugarland – Basically a really well-put together, diverse pop album, like pop superstars at this band's commercial level used to make in the mid ‘80s. And sometimes sounding like mid ‘80s pop, too. Uneven, but not that uneven. Fast songs are almost always better than the slow ones. Favorites: probably “Take Me As I Am,” “It Happens,” “Operation: Working Vacation.” Inching toward my 2008, though probably still a bit too inconsistent to actually get there.

("toward my 2008 Top 10," that is.)

Actually, "Fading Fire" on that James Dunn album really kicks, too -- mainstream blues-based non-weirdo hard rock with killer guitar solos, as good if not better than any on the Escovedo album. And Dunn's voice is better than competent even if the words are more or less dumbass cliches about heat and fire and burning. So I should stop complaining and overthinking things and just sit back and enjoy the record (when it's enjoyable, which I guess just like Hayes Carrl mainly means when Dunn's not wussing out on us).

And "Chelsea Hotel '78" and "Smoke" and "Chip N Tony" and maybe "Real Animal" are why I thought the Escovedo sounded so rocking a few months back -- in other words, because sometimes, it does. And sometimes he writes okay. It's just that, like the Dunn and the Carrl, you really have to sort through the sap to get to the good parts.

Left Lane Cruiser's two-guy punk-blues rockabilly/Howlin Wolf holding up pretty well when swallowed in small doses, too, though they're at least as one-trick-pony as Ashton Shepherd, in their own way.

Sugarland's Achilles heel, when they have one, is Nettles' drawl, which she sometimes has a tendency to exagerrate into nothingness sometimes -- usually when they slow down.

I've had no use for Alejandro Escovedo's since about two weeks after I bought it. Sugarland -- I still play. Usually after three cans of cheap beer.

Haven't listened to the Road Hammers in months. But Ashton Shepherd still comes out every so often. And speaking of drawls, boy does she have one. The "cooler slushin'" line is so OTT you could almost mistake it for a Pennsy Dutch accent. Honest.

Everything on the Kathleen Edwards' Asking for Flowers is dead to me except "The Cheapest Key," which I'll still play. And since it's the most un-Kathleen Edwards tune on the disc, this means I don't really like her so much as I thought I did.

And still haven't been moved to buy Brad Paisley's Play -- even though I play guitar and liked the cover story they did on him at Guitar Player earlier this year.

George, how are Boxmasters holding up for you? Because even despite the occasional funny lyrics and decent stolen melodies, Billy Bob's vocals are sounding increasingly like nothing to me (as dead or deader than any other singer I've mentioned here), and it's not like they have the guitars to make up for it, I don't think. (Never cared about the covers disc, really; new Xmas album didn't even last an entire listen.)

Left Lane Cruiser's vocals are at least a growl, which is something even if it's a done to death schtick. And their guitars can actually be pretty great; the music stomps, even when the singing doesn't. But they're so monochromatic that they're destined to be future storage-bin fodder, at best. Probably not quite worth getting rid of, but not all that far off.

Lady Antebellum still sounding pretty good as a minor-league Sugarland in hooky commercial pop-rock disguised as country terms, though the girl could probably afford to drawl a little more in their case. The guy singer's Rob Thomas moaning should bug me, probably, but for some reason it still doesn't.

Actually, I think I'd maybe even say that Lady Antebellum's "Lookin' For a Good Time" is a catchier Sugarland single than either of the Sugarland singles off their own album. (But then again, my favorite songs on the Sugarland album have not yet been singles.)

Left Lane Cruiser and the Boxmasters should merge, maybe. The two styles of half-assed singing would balance each other out like in a ugly-vocal/clean-vocal metal band, and between LLC's stomping noisy boogie and the Boxmasters' melodies and sense of humor, they could combine for a pretty good album. (The Boxmasters' guitars probably are okay, actually; just in a much more trad country way that I have a harder time getting excited about. And LLC can be kinda humorous in their own right, espeically when the topic is food; it's just harder to make out their words.)

Sugarland song (a live "bonus track" cover of some singer-songwriter, apparently) that always makes me go ewwwwww: "Come On Get Higher," the one that goes "loosen my lips/Faith and desire and the swing of your hips." Sounds like Christian grandma sex or something. Cringe.

Reckless Kelly and the Road Hammers both in the CD changer now. Both good, neither great. Two kinds of country-rock bands; Road Hammers more four-square, Kelly more expansive. Both would be better if their singers sounded less plain and normal. Road Hammers stomp more and have more memorable songs (the best of which usually tend to be cover versions); Kelly have better (more powerpop, really) melodies and guitar solos but often go in one ear out the other. (I like their album better than Drive By Truckers' this year, but DBTs definitely still have more personality, not that they make me care about it or like it v very often.) (Least unmemorable '08 Reckless Kelly song, easy: "American Blood," about a soldier coming back from the war.)

Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band have blues (and old-timey) guitars as raunchy as Left Lane Cruiser, but better hooks and at least marginally graspable non-singing. And definitely better songs, especially when they talk about not having enough money, which is often. Which makes them timely (as is Mechanical Bull's version of "Debts No Honest Man Can Pay.")

Ha ha, hadn't noticed before that Restless Kelly's very un-barbecued-iguana-like "Guy Like Me" steals parts of its melody from "Mexican Radio" by Wall of Voodoo. (Their best steals still probably come from the Beatles, though. They made a lot of sense in the changer alongside the reissue of '70s cult powerpop major-label flops Blue Ash I just got in the mail from Collector's Choice yesterday.)

And Road Hammers' guitar parts often pack considerably more punch than Restless Kelly's; the latter just seem to do more (very likeable) exploring, I guess.

Mother Truckers sound more Stonesy and fun in general than I remembered, though their hippie-Deadhead choogliness still leaves me kinda skeptical.

And Chris Knight's voice still sounds really sodden, no matter how good his songwriting and Cougar heartland-rock riffs are when you listen close for them.

In fact I'd say Mother Truckers' happy hippie-dippie party-in-the-old-barnhouse rock could even afford to be a little more sodden -- It lacks gravity, somehow. The MTs and Chris Knight could both teach each other some lessons if they were locked in a room.

Track that makes me want to throw things at the stereo on the Road Hammers album is "Flat Tires (Bloopers, Out-Takes N Such)," the collage of song snippets and car-horn honks at the end. What is it there for? Is it supposed to be a radio commercial or something? It's not funny, just annoying. (Rest of the album is real good, though.)

The repetitiveness of the long run-on sentences in "Girl on a Billboard" kinda feels like water-board torture sometimes, too, but actually, the more I listen the more I really do like the guitars, and Jason McCoy's singing. The guitar solos are concise and compact, barely even solos really, but they really do kick. And there's a real power to his singing in the almost commercial-country (but with blues guitars) "I Don't Know When To Quit" (a single, like almost half of the other songs on the album according to Wikipedia -- guess they just keep throwing songs at the charts to see if any of them will eventually stick; been doing it with these batch of songs for three years now.) Country-radio-worthy singing in "I Got the Scars To Prove It" too; that one could almost be a Jamey Johnson song. Also like how so many of Road Hammer songs, appropriately given their fiarly single-minded trucker lyrics, have that chugging road rhythm underneath. How many albums have two different songs with the word "bound" in their title, neither about bondage no less? (Also just noticed that Chris Knight wrote "The Hammer Going Down," another really tough kicking track. And Paul Thorn wrote "Heart With Four Wheel Drive," another tough one. And dipshit John Rich wrote "Workin' Hard At Lovin' You," fairly rote ass-man lyrics but good hard music to go with it plus manly working-on-chain-gang grunts.)

Great Mother Truckers song: "I'm Comin' Over," early '70s hard rock bubblegum disguised as roots rock, with handclaps and everything. (George, you'd like this. And Restless Kelly too, I think.)

Boxmasters' still gets played. I like "Poor House" and "Shit List" a lot. The former, mostly because of the video I saw first, with Billy Bob mugging his way through it. "Shit List" because it has the best melody on the first disc. I also still like a lot of the covers disc, particularly "Original Mixed Up Kid" and "Sawmill." Plus Billy Bob did really make it sound late-Sixties vintage except without the vinyl crackle. It does.

Read the interview of Mother Truckers in Guitar Player. Saw the CD. Still not quite moved to spec buy.

Yeah, in these last few posts I'd given both the Boxmasters and Ashton Shepherd CDs more grief than they deserved -- They're both good albums, and the more I go back and listen, Billy Bob sings better than Ashton is less one-trick than I suggested.

I love at least one more song on the Kathleen Edwards album than George does (namely I Make the Dough, You Get the Glory" -- I'm a sucker for a good catchy hockey song), but there are definitely way more songs that put me the sleep than songs that wake me up on that album. (Also, "The Cheapest Key" might only be my second favorite letter-by-letter alphabet song of the year, behind "Mars is for Martians" by the Boss Martians, featuring Iggy Pop on guest vocal. But it's a close call.)

New Toby Keith, the more I listen, sounds really phoned-in, by Toby standards. Still a keeper (not many singers do lazy as well as Toby does), but quite possibly my least favorite album he's made this decade (not counting Xmas albums or any other non-regular-albums that shouldn't count because I never listened to them.)

Phil Vassar's album still has a shot at my 2008 country top ten, just not my Pazz & Jop top ten

Looks like my obsessive-compulsive reappraisals have scared everybody away, but what the heck, I take this back (again). I'm falling back in love with Vassar's album -- a more audacious and consistent '80s pop album than Sugarland's, actually (Robert Palmer/Phil Collins/'80s Elton/'80s Seger style, in Vassar's case.) If the year ended right now, it'd make my Pazz & Jop; as is, the only country albums with better odds right now of making my list are Jamey Johnson, Ross Johnson, Woodbox Gang, and Carter's Chord, in that order.

Next several, after Vassar: Road Hammers, James McMurtry, Sugarland, Amanda Shaw, Chris Knight, Heidi Newfield, Reckless Kelly, Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band, Mother Truckers, Montgomery Gentry, Old Crow Medicine Show, Trace Adkins, Ashton Shepherd, Billy Currington, Lady Antebellum, Hayes Carrl, Toby Keith, Dolly Parton, Keith Anderson, Too Slim and the Tail Draggers, Alejandro Escovedo, Kathleen Edwards, Boxmasters, Those Darlins (EP), Rebecca Lynn Howard, James Dunn, Alan Jackson, Mechanical Bull, Left Lane Cruiser. (Biggest surprise on that list for me is Old Crow Medicine Show, which finally really kicked in; pretty confident now in thinking I underrated it in the Voice.))

Still haven't heard Taylor Swift yet, though.

I'm always way behind with these EOTY lists (The Josh Turner ended up being my favorite of '07 though I didn't hear it until '08) but right now my top 10 would have to include Jamey Johnson, Toby Keith, Kathleen Edwards, Lee Ann Womack, George Strait, Billy Currington, Sugarland, Patty Loveless, Montgomery Gentry and Hayes Carrl. Or maybe I'll swap one of them out for Alan Jackson.

I haven't listened to the Joey + Rory or the Ralph Stanley II CDs that Country blogs are excited about, or the new Kasey Chambers, and I'm only once through OCMS.

I'm not sure how this'll change by the end of the year, if I do Pazz & Jop or some other poll, but this week I had to submit a top 10 for the main website I write for. My list included three country albums - Jamey Johnson, Willie Nelson and Dolly Parton. None others were that close to making it. Maybe Montgomery Gentry was closest. There's a bunch of other albums where I really like a good half or more but couldnt quite get behind the whole thing, not enough for a top 10 - Alan Jackson, George Strait, Lee Ann Womack, Trent Willmon, Randy Travis, Sugarland, Patty Loveless. Maybe Kenny Chesney too, though half or more is probably an exaggeration for that one, it's just a few songs I really like. Another album that stands out for me as interesting is Murry Hammond's album of train songs and religious songs, for the atmospheric sound/style of it and for his singing being better than I expected.

Oh add Trace Adkins to that list of almost-there albums too. It may be more consistent than most of those actually.

Oh,and I forgot Ashton Sheppard's album (which I was about to give up on until my wife made me listen to it in the car few dozen more times.)

Since this is the first year in many where I didn't free-lance any reviews, I'm not doing polls. Sugarland's been my favorite of these. The rest, except for Boxmasters, only fair to eh overall. Of them all, Shepherd definitely had the best-sounding LP. Jorgensen doing guitars may have had something to do with that.

I'll be assiduously avoiding anything to do with Taylor Swift. Of minor interest in yesterday's NYT feature was the nugget that she was originally from Wyomissing, the high-property value 'burb of Reading, Pennsyltucky, where I once went to college.

Having trouble with this screen since the re-launch, but maybe I can say : 1) good call on New Bloods, though I wouldn't say "off-kilter," they just have their own sense of balance (like Nick Nolte on a good night) and the fiddle isn't a million miles from Charlie Burnham's work with Blood Ulmer's Odyssey (album and later Odyssey The Band, as the reunited session crew's billed), and when they both play in the 52nd St. Blues Project, whe Burnham also plays mandolin and sings.We've talked about Carolina Chocolate Drops on a couple of RC Threads, and I've mentioned Ebony Hillbillies a year or two ago (linking then to Kandia's feature)but also, I just heard some eerie calm mountainy tracks from Laura Love's Negrass album). Somewhat in the same vein (mines and mountains, but really more of a stringband than bluegrass, though they're new stars on the circuit): self-titled debut of the Steeldrivers--sort of like if Seger were to make an album backed by the Del McCoury Band, like Earle did--only even less trad(making wise use of P.Domain for copyrights, however) yet non'trad in in a subtle enough way(not counting the nongrass vocals, which aren't subtle, just unaffected)yet not newgrass ect (re today's country as retro rock, something like "Heaven Sent" evokes one of Dickie Betts' higher-flying solos, but it doesn't even have electric instruments, much less solos--the whole album is pretty much unplugged, but moves right along, unhurriedly, yet 10 songs in 36 minutes )Gets better as it goes along, too. The second half kicks in quicer than the first. It's on Rounder. Sorry bout any typos, this box keeps distending.

I had trouble on the first day of re-launch. What you need to do is go into personal choices and reset your "look" choice to old ILX style sheet. That should fix the squirmy, distending input box phenom on
what I'm assuming is your PC. Anyway, it did for me.