Rolling country 2007 thread

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MIRANDA LAMBERT OH MY GOD!!!

i know you've all had the miranda album for weeks (months, maybe) but i just got it and it's the best record i've heard in a long time. of the singles i'd already heard, i kinda like "famous in a small town" and i kinda don't like "crazy ex-girlfriend" -- a little bit too on-the-nose for her -- but neither of 'em came close to preparing me for the album.

favorites so far are "dry town" -- how on earth did that one emerge from the pen of gillian welch? -- "gunpowder & lead," which is kinda like kerosene times three (what's she gonna kill him with on her next album, an A-bomb?), "love letters," which musically is very gram parsons and which i played about 11 times in a row yesterday, and "guilty in here."

― fact checking cuz, Tuesday, 1 May 2007 18:15 (nineteen years ago)

so, the John Anderson ballads on the new one aren't quite as bad as I remembered, he pulls them off relatively OK. I guess I find Big and Rich's production just cold, somehow, and featureless (although there's a nice eerie steel bit on one of the slower ones). the whole trick of the ominoso fiddle they use I find tiresome, and anyway John Anderson needs to be more soulful--I just find the whole presentation synthetic, in the bad old Nashville manner. but a couple of great tracks. I give it a B.

Lacy Younger's "Still Wild" title track (Big Deal Records) starts off with an obvious Stones rip, a hanging-in-mid-air Keef riff and basic rock and roll chord progression #5, and she sings not like a country singer but she kinda sounds tart like Bettye LaVette or someone. She used to be a tough girl and took the curves at 95. She's still wild, and I suppose this is no Banger Sisters shit, she looks pretty young. Definitely a species of oversinging but it's not bad. I guess she's supposed to be a "mature" rock chick. More rueful self-knowledge on "Here's to You," which is another Stones rip circa Sticky Fingers except she's not on smack or coked out, altho her voice throughout is just ravaged enough. Nice gams on the back and that's a drawing (I think) of a flower around them but at first it looked like barbed wire. Recorded in California and the insert has more pictures of Lacy, another leg shot, one of her running along a pier of some sort at dusk or sunup in shorts and a white sort of underwear top and a crucifix, judging from the gams she runs a good bit. wrote most of the songs herself and tell the truth I enjoy this, just basic rock and roll with occasional cowbell and it sounds like she really wants to be a soul mama. pretty interesting.

― whisperineddhurt, Tuesday, 1 May 2007 18:41 (nineteen years ago)

)"Pointless Drinking" totally reminds me of either Nellie McKay or Marit Larsen, I'm not sure which.

Yeah, I was going to say. Of course Marit is way way better: better timing, the fact that she's used to being shy and playing second fiddle so she's developed this skill of flicking drops of small-voiced sulfuric acid at you. I think LaVere has moments where she could half do this, when the song is good ("Killing Him" yes, "Pointless Drinking"* no). The quietness isn't mere restraint, but she needs more nonquietness to play off of. I'm going solely by what's on her MySpace. And indeed I'd class her more with Fiona and Bjork and even PJ than with country, I'd say.

(*As opposed to purposeful drinking?)

― Frank Kogan, Tuesday, 1 May 2007 19:16 (nineteen years ago)

And in the MySpace battle of the Amys, I'm not sure if LaVere loses to Dalley. I'm more moved by Amy Dalley's voice by a long shot, but Dalley doesn't have the songs - I mean, they're good, but not great. (But listening to them now, she clearly does beat LaVere.) Where Dalley's songs go country they're at their weakest, lose impact. Maybe my hearing has shifted, what with all these rock riffs and Sheryl-n-Jewel-voiced singers these days, but when Dalley jumps from the rock to the wailing country chorus in "I Built The Wall," the chorus sounds like just a style she's putting on. (Not quite sure what I'm saying. Maybe I simply think the melodies get wanky in the choruses.)

Haven't heard either of the Dalley songs mentioned upthread, mind you.

― Frank Kogan, Tuesday, 1 May 2007 19:36 (nineteen years ago)

I never really remotely understand what Edd means when he says country albums sound "dishonest" to him (though to be fair he did explain more later about why he thinks the production gets in the way), but you know what? I've been playing the John Anderson album the past couple days, and it's fine. At least as good as, say, the new Pam Tillis album; probably better. And the best ballads on it ("Bonnie Blue," somehow about race and the South and maybe orchestrated too long at six minutes but still lovely; "Weeds," just really dejected == "don't wanna hear how times are hard gotta pull the weeds from my own backyard"; "Something To Drink About," a vaguely calypso-lilting marriage warning -- "if you like the nightlife more than a good wife...") stack up to most of the non-ballads, my favorite of which, yeah, is easily "Brown Liquor" (makes me crazy quicker than an old red fox on the run and I get t-t-t-tongue tied and lose my mind and everything comes undone), but "Easy Money" (what musicians make on the road, which is a lot of hard work) is not far behind, maybe "Funky Country" too. The Hawaiian sound of "Willie's Guitar" almost makes up for its obligatory album-ending-song-about-Willie-why-would-anybody-give-a-fuck pandering, and the only song I come close to actively disliking, I think, is probably "You Already Know My Love," which despite its sogginess at least has half a melody reminiscent of "Easy" by the Commodores. Need to listen to the remaining cuts (especially the remaining ballads) a little closer, still, but all that adds up to a pretty good album in my book--especially with Jawn's honeyed whiskey drawl, which still really hold up to my ears, singing it all. So why complain, guys?

― xhuxk, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 11:55 (nineteen years ago)

As for "Funky Country" (which to my ears actually isn't as funky as "Easy Money" or "Brown Liquor"), it's still a really good idea, and I'm glad that it exists. And "A Woman Knows," "If Her Lovin Don't Kill Me" (very timid first single choice) and "I Can't Make Her Cry Anymore" are fairly generic, but also all fairly crafty, not bad. (And now I'm realizing that the opening orchestrations of the strange "Bonnie Blue" kinda bring to mind the opening of the admittedly superior "Seminole Wind," another stretched-out song about the south.)

― xhuxk, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 12:11 (nineteen years ago)

yeah, "Funky Country" sort of gets at what I grope toward when I say "dishonest," Chuck, as I sometimes do. there B&R's shtick has hardened a bit--got it. but Anderson rides right over the lyrics, he really makes them come alive. I find the obvious homage to '80s production styles (the piano sound in "Bonnie Blue" for example, and this is also a higher-grade Alabama song that is also somehow good) not to my taste, and the calculated dishonesty of that '80s country shit I hate, like Alabama, seems to me part of Big & Rich's aesthetic, a big part. what's honest about this record, though, is its sentimentality, which Anderson earns on virtually every cut. I mean "Bonnie Blue" actually works, in the end; the high-gloss production overall strikes me as relatively depthless--and that's a complaint about Nashville mastering, really, as well as production I think I'm well justified to make. what made the last B&R record not quite work (for me; I did like the big-beat shit and thought the phased-out pop was also real interesting) was the tension between what they kinda sorta want to be as populists and what they kinda sorta are trying to do that's "subversive" but it's only only subversive by the standards of Nashville, which once kind of rejected them. so I think they're frustrated like subversive '80s artists (or early '90s artists, like Beck or someone) taking their revenge on Nashville. so they compress the vocals too much just to put that idea in your face, and they're comin' to yr. shitty. anyway I've been listening to Easy Money and its overstatement mostly does really work and the goopy ballads aren't really ballads but Anderson's story-songs and it breathes fairly well. just wish there seemed to more ideas than combining a kickdrum with the ominoso fiddle (and "Something to Drink About" does go somewhere even in the arrangement), but I guess that's their idea of sending up or celebrating something or another.

― whisperineddhurt, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 14:42 (nineteen years ago)

saw the video for Martin McBride's "Anyway," where she's kind of in this Lynchean blue-lit celestial bar, and it appears she can read the minds of all the yearning searchers she sees from up above. one woman's word baloon is "I want to be famous," a guy's is "I miss her," and so forth. she looks handsome, a gamine of a certain age. so I finally pulled out Waking Up Laughing and it's her big certainty-of-life move and lotsa modal rock guitar on the first two songs, and definitely she's trying hard to be a liberal, trying to find a reason as she sings, but that's about her guy who thinks she uses too much makeup. the opening riff of "For These Times" communicates that bad-news-in-the-morning-coffee fake angst that pop can do so well ("Five o'Clock World" and for that matter the opening to "Ask for Jill" by the dB's, and I mean "For These Times" is like a good Peter Holsapple or Gin Blossoms song, nice warm chord substitutions and a polite mandolin obliggato in there. I think she's saying the Redeemer is the man for these times we live in. boy, she hits some doozies of a note in this one, I mean the breath control is amazing but she also sounds just kind of worried about her artistic direction so she's going all sisterly and serious and soulful (nice female backing vocals on the fade of "For These Times," maybe Mavis Staples could've done it). "Anyway" has childlike piano plinks and sure enough, "one storm could go and blow it all away" just like a house of cards. "Dream it anyway," so that's it, and she is definitely working the Jesus side of the fence here, genteel Calvinsim: "God is great but sometimes life ain't good," but she perseveres. the video is more creepy than the song although the strings are really nice on this, this is better than Coldplay by a mile.

― whisperineddhurt, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 15:44 (nineteen years ago)

also, on the closing track "Love Land" McBride renders "modern medicine" paired with "Thomas Edison" and it's a song about how God is the ultimate healer despite all progress, I think, and it's apparently also about her mate? so, a sexy enough Christian if no Amy Grant.

― whisperineddhurt, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 16:09 (nineteen years ago)

they compress the vocals too much

I'm embarrassed to say that I've never learned what "compressed" means in the context of recording. Any easy way to explain it?

― Frank Kogan, Thursday, 3 May 2007 02:45 (nineteen years ago)

My hip-hop single of the year (probably), "Lip Gloss" by Lil Mama

Lil Mama is on the remix of Rihanna's "Umbrella." I like Lil Mama's rapping more than Jay-Z's, these days.

― Frank Kogan, Thursday, 3 May 2007 02:47 (nineteen years ago)

Whoa. Miranda Lambert on the cover of No Depression.

― mulla atari, Thursday, 3 May 2007 11:59 (nineteen years ago)

Wow, she's all over the print media. I just bought the cd on sale for $10 at Circuit City so I probably do not have any of those extra songs Frank mentioned up thread. Will check later.

― curmudgeon, Thursday, 3 May 2007 13:18 (nineteen years ago)

yeah, good piece on Miranda in ND, I thought. just caught the last chords of her doing "famous in a small town" on TV in NYC.

frank, compression in recording just means squeezing the high-low frequencies into a smaller aural "space," just like taking a rubber ball and making it fit into a box too small for it. this makes everything easier to then boost at a later stage, like mastering. makes it easier for radio to deal with, bigger disparities between high-low frequencies don't come across so well on radio. in general, Nashville recording techniques result in music that sounds flat but big, as opposed to spacious but big. the best example of this is the last big and rich record--the vocals are just RIGHT THERE, not exisiting in any offsetting space at all, and also in general one big thing Nashville does is to get rid of that space that old recordings seem to exist in, so there's no contrast. compression and boosting also result in a record like that last Go-Betweens record, where everyhing has been turned into a high-def aural picture in which the various elements sound, simply, too fucking loud. it really screwed up that record.

― whisperineddhurt, Thursday, 3 May 2007 14:08 (nineteen years ago)

This is really the best recent piece on compression, Frank, from the site you've lately been gracing with your presence:

http://www.stylusmagazine.com/articles/weekly_article/imperfect-sound-forever.htm

― JoshLove, Thursday, 3 May 2007 16:50 (nineteen years ago)

no kidding, Josh, that's just an amazing piece. I'll add that even records that really sound pretty good--a bunch of them coming out of Nashville these days, like the latest Greencards record--are also compressed way more than you would notice, it's just that it sounds different when you do it to voices and acoustic instruments than if you do it to the Stooges or the Go-Betweens (whose last record I love, musically, but it really is kind of wearing to listen to over a superior system, it's just all crashing in there together and too goddamned LOUD. I mean, I'm really no analogue fuddyduddy at all and I like things to sound good, but there's a limit (to limiting).

― whisperineddhurt, Thursday, 3 May 2007 17:24 (nineteen years ago)

Haven't looked at that article, but does it explain what compression sounds like? Because I doubt I'd know it if I heard it. (I might not know auto-tune either, come to think of it. Hi Frank.)

Wanted to put in another plug for this seemingly unique English language honky-tonk with Spanish langauge Tejano translations album I mentioned a couple months ago. I actually wound up liking his singing, songs, and production more as time went on (though I still can't stomach his song about 9-11):

http://cdbaby.com/cd/gabelopezmusic

― xhuxk, Friday, 4 May 2007 12:10 (nineteen years ago)

kind of wearing to listen to over a superior system

Well, Edd, if you borrow my shitty stereo, maybe that'll solve the problem! We can trade if you want.

― xhuxk, Friday, 4 May 2007 12:36 (nineteen years ago)

Ha! naw, Chuck, mine is also pretty shitty. I depends upon the kindnessess of my more affluent friends to try to listen to stuff all audiophile and everything. my buddy Blair has like this Rega turntable and some kind of tube-driven pre-amp shit and you hear things you never heard before. on the other hand, that audiophile stuff can make you snide about things and that's not my intention. the best way I can put it, to answer Chuck's question, is that the records don't exist in a recognizable aural space--they're flat and there's no contrast between the different parts of the recording.

my temporarily pressed into service Memorex DVD/CD player does OK but it won't play a bunch of stuff. one point the above-linked piece makes is that "music critics" should listen to music on the best stuff they can afford. exactly. in my opinion, part of what makes Nashville Nashville is this technical stuff, this is the world capital of all that.

if I could upgrade just a little I'd be happy, and I definitely need better speakers. paying my dentist and my phone bill takes precedence, though.

anybody heard Carrie Underwood's Pretenders song "I'll Stand by You" on iTunes?

― whisperineddhurt, Friday, 4 May 2007 13:48 (nineteen years ago)

One thing that makes a big difference, and can be less trouble than getting new speakers etc. is good headphones. Mine are Sony MV7, or something like that; anyway, they were highest rated in Consumer Reports, ca. '89. edd, you were whisperin vs. "8th of November," but I like the way the lost patrol goes round and round with the fiddle, like they're hanging on the helicopter getting 'em outta there.Big & Rich are calling and calling, steadfast but alarmed. It's the only post-"Angry American" war song I've heard much on the radio, and of course it's about Vietnam...

― dow, Friday, 4 May 2007 17:07 (nineteen years ago)

(Xhuxk: "Umbrella Remix" f. Lil Mama)

Thanks Edd and Josh for the compression info. Like Xhuxk, I don't know if I'd be able to identify compression if I heard it.

Also, I've never been able to tell by listening that something's been auto-tuned, and Eppy's said that when he tried to use auto-tune he found that it couldn't do all that much. So I don't know if I overrate auto-tune or not, since I can't tell when it's being used. But I'm thinking that if it could put things in tune, then there are times when it would be a good thing, depending on whether the people who were using it were idiots or not. (Editing is the writing equivalent of auto-tune, and again, it depends on the editor whether it helps or hurts.) Anyway, what Xhuxk's really saying is that I underrate some out-of-tune singing. (But, like auto-tune, out-of-tune depends on how it's used.)

― Frank Kogan, Saturday, 5 May 2007 02:50 (nineteen years ago)

The 1997 remaster of Raw Power reaches an extraordinary -4dB, making it supposedly the loudest rock record

And it was terrible compared to the original version (which had problems too). But my guess is that Iggy blew it in a lot of ways, not just in the compression but in the mixing.

(Don't know if I'd end up agreeing or disagreeing with Nick, if I knew more. In general, I think modern music sounds great. But Avril's "Girlfriend" irritates the hell out of me, despite my basically liking the song, and maybe the way they punched up the volume has to do with my dislike of it. I much much much prefer the sound of the Shirelles' "Mama Said" (for instance) to the sound of "Girlfriend," and I'd always assumed this has to do with music makers having had a better sense of how to do fun and lilt in the early '60s in comparison to how producers and engineers and performers (and audiences) go for fun and lilt now; but maybe the lack of compression has something to do with my preference, too. But I'll bet my preference for noncompression is selective.)

― Frank Kogan, Saturday, 5 May 2007 03:35 (nineteen years ago)

Carrie Underwood's version of "I'll Stand By You". YouTube sound, so not the greatest; she sings it nicely, but I have issues with the video, though maybe it was the best way to raise money: it's a charity single. Girls Aloud recorded the same song as a charity single several years ago. (Better vid.)

― Frank Kogan, Saturday, 5 May 2007 04:06 (nineteen years ago)

One thing that makes a big difference, and can be less trouble than getting new speakers etc. is good headphones.

If you actually enjoy listening with headphones, maybe (I don't, at all, unless I'm deejaying.)

Ike Reilly album sounds very dull to me so far. Horn parts have more life than the talk-singing, which ickily reminds me more of Dan Bern than Bruce Springsteen. But I've only listened to a few cuts.

― xhuxk, Saturday, 5 May 2007 09:57 (nineteen years ago)

Now I wish somebody would explain to me why I'm liking this new Jan Bell so much when Jan usually can't bother to summon up enough energy to even annunciate most of the words in a comprehensible way, plus most of it is done at a near-funeral dirge tempo. (Though "Leavin' Town" is at least a midtempo gallop, and clearly about, well, leavin' town.) Anyway, you'd think I'd hate such stuff. Guess what I like is the melodies. Which I believe are largely minor key, though don't quote me on that. And actually, the whole goth-folk mood of the thing reminds me more of what I like about lady-led European dark metal bands like the Gathering than what I like about anything on this country thread, though the instrumentation and so on are clearly more country than metal. Most goth moment: the spooky witchy background mourning howls and bats in the belfry thumpdy-bumping about in "Miners." Other favorites: "January Morning," "Given," "Ships in the Air." And here's her link again, just in case:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/jbcheapdates

― xhuxk, Saturday, 5 May 2007 12:35 (nineteen years ago)

(Just noticed "Snake Song" is by Townes Van Zandt.)

― xhuxk, Saturday, 5 May 2007 12:36 (nineteen years ago)

Guess what I like is the melodies. Which I believe are largely minor key

And which are also largely beautiful, if I didn't get that point across. As is Jan's low-key singing.

― xhuxk, Saturday, 5 May 2007 12:43 (nineteen years ago)

Thankfully, I don't know who or care who Dan Bern is!

― Dimension 5ive, Saturday, 5 May 2007 13:12 (nineteen years ago)

Dan Bern's a sorta Graham Parker-style singer/songwriter, literary division, whose last album Breathe I thought could've been a decent enough heartland kind of thing. wasn't terrible and I detected a sense of humor. I liked it enough to write a brief preview of his Nashville show but not enough to really listen to it afterwards.

I'm in the middle of doing something on Animal Collective, just thought I'd mention that boy were you ever right Chuck, about the difference between their earlier atmospheric/raucous/drunken shit and what they do lately, which hits me like the Beach Boys' Love You gone self-consciously native.

Compadres, the new duets comp with Marty Stuart and friends, is mostly boring. Stuart should sing "The Weight" to himself in the shower and much as I love Mavis Staples (whose new Ry Cooder-produced record was aptly summed up by Soul Brother #3, my buddy Dave Duncan, as "plenty of soul but no funk, so go home"), she can't do it either. But I do like the ZZ Top intro to "One Woman Man" with George Jones. The one sort of inspired moment is the Fab Superlatives and Old Crow Medicine Show doing "I Can See for Miles" off of that country klassic, The Who Sell Out. All it needs is a fake commercial for Ford Trucks or Goo-Goo Clusters or super-tough weed-eater string.

― whisperineddhurt, Saturday, 5 May 2007 14:55 (nineteen years ago)

and speaking of J. Robbie Robertson and songs that sound good when the Band does them but not so good elsewhere (and I mean, try to imagine someone else doing, oh, "Caledonia Mission" off that first Band record--the interplay of the voices and the general angst of the Band seems to be the point, along with the virtuoso ensemble playing), Richard Shindell does "Acadian Driftwood," from the third-best Band record, on South of Delia, which I suppose belongs on this thread. His voice bugs me, it's folkie vibrato, and while the man sounds intelligent and a good person in love with the Planet, and he picks some good songs like "Deportee" and "Lawrence, KS," nothing ever builds here, which means he's not as smart as Robbie Robertson. Loosen up! Still, "Acadian Driftwood" is almost a good song, it's a good song, it's hard to decide because the Band's vocalizing is imbedded in my brain and I'm a fan of Manuel's singing--where the Band sounds natural mourning the counterculture in the guise of History on their version, and can get away with a line like "what went down on the Plains of Abraham," Shindell just sounds kinda dorky. This kind of record just taxes me--I'm allergic to this kind of folkiedom, even when you get high-quality people like Richard Thompson and Victor Krauss helping out, and Thompson's guitar on one track definitely makes it sound better.

― whisperineddhurt, Saturday, 5 May 2007 15:07 (nineteen years ago)

one last thing and then I'm out into the 98% humidity-soup of this day--we need the rain. new Porter Wagoner isn't killing me on first listen, he tells some stories out of the past and the record's framed by an intro that asserts that "the Wagonmaster is coming." sings a little better than Charlie Louvin (they're the same age). haven't heard any "Rubber Room"-style psychodramas yet but maybe they're reserved for the latter half of the record, or maybe I just need more coffee to combat this insomnia that doesn't wanna quit.

― whisperineddhurt, Saturday, 5 May 2007 15:14 (nineteen years ago)

Don't really get the Dan Bern/Graham Parker comparison; here's a song to stream and long discussion (which I partake in) on the guy:

http://paperthinwalls.com/singlefile/item?id=104

"When Irish Eyes Are Burning" on Ike Reilly's album does have some momentum to it; sounds pretty good. More cuts like that, and maybe I'll be sold. But mainly he's been striking me as bland and precious.

― xhuxk, Saturday, 5 May 2007 15:36 (nineteen years ago)

"Fish Plant Uprising" okay too (basically, when he speeds up, I don't mind how boring his singing is.)

― xhuxk, Saturday, 5 May 2007 15:41 (nineteen years ago)

if "it's hard to make love to an american" and "you're so plain" and "let's get friendly" don't sell you on this one, chuck, then you aint never gonna get it

i don't think this is as good as sparkle in the finish but i still think it's got enough for me to love it a lot a lot a lot

sad to say i'm not surprised about marty stuart's album kinda sucking, i hate duets albums and it would seem to bring out all of his worst tendencies

― Dimension 5ive, Saturday, 5 May 2007 15:43 (nineteen years ago)

oh, Chuck, on some of the last record Dan Bern sounded to me just like Costello or Graham Parker, right down to his vocals. new wave.

the Stuart record doesn't suck--it's just boring, plus Marty isn't the world's deepest singer or anything. Porter's record gets going, some, and there's one pretty good song about a woman who has to hot-wire the world--it's about rock and roll, sort of.

― whisperineddhurt, Saturday, 5 May 2007 17:45 (nineteen years ago)

Bern's got one song on Breathe, "Tongue-Tied," where he sounds like he's trying to sound like John Lennon. It's embarrassing but has a nice melody and is one of the better songs on the album; I'd have a lot more respect for Bern if he sounded like he were trying to sound like Ian Hunter or Sonny Bono. The title song, the one which garnered a subtly critical review in Paper Thin Walls, sounds like he's trying to sound like Dylan on Blood On The Tracks, and is a hair less laughable than "Tongue-Tied," and has a tune.

― Frank Kogan, Saturday, 5 May 2007 22:00 (nineteen years ago)

anyone know why randy travis spends so much time touring casinos? seems more likely he's preaching to the sinners than he likes the gaming, right?

― gabbneb, Sunday, 6 May 2007 00:06 (nineteen years ago)

guess Travis makes big money playing the casinos?

interesting on Dan Bern over at PTWs--I never can understand how publicists get exercised when a critic like Frank nails the appeal of one of their artists. Dan Bern wants us to think he's a fool! An American holy fool in love with baseball, rock and roll--just tryin' to make sense of it all.

xps

― whisperineddhurt, Sunday, 6 May 2007 14:09 (nineteen years ago)

re-posted from metal thread; putting it here because "sweet potato" sounds sorta country to me for some reason (the melody i guess) and link wray was sort of a rockabilly, right? plus the gore gores, no doubt wanda jackson fans, have done songs named "country man" and "cattle call" in the past. (ps: steve whiteman used to sing for kix; funny money is his new band. just so you understand.)

Gore Gore Girls' new album, though, is even better. I know this at least in part because, when "Loaded Heart" (which might not even be my favorite track on it) came up, I was thinking, "damn this is BY FAR the best track on this Funny Money album," but it wasn't Funny Money even though Amy Surdu's voice sure did sound like Steve Whiteman's at the time. It was those "Cool Jerk"/Motown basslines in a loud rock context that did it for me, I think. Probably the best dance-rock I've heard by anybody this year, on an album that's in the running now with Trigger Renegade and Miranda Lambert as topping my 2007 list so far. Other favorites, some of which appeared previously on an EP and some of which didn't, include "Fox in a Box," "All Grown Up" (which reminds me of my daughter Cordelia), the viciously quotable and partially talked you-don't-own-me song (though I won't quote it) "Pleasure Unit," "You Lied To Me Before," the very hard rocking "Mary Ann," "Sweet Potato" (the most country track probably), and the Link Wray style guitar instro George needs to hear "Hammer Stomp." That's most of the album. The rest is swell, too.

Also listening this weekend to Jimmy Ray's bizarre post-George Michael-doing-"Faith" pompadoured fake funkabilly self-titled album from ten years ago (which produced the top 40 hit "Are You Jimmy Ray"); for some reason, a copy ended up on the free table at work Friday. What an odd, fun, record. As close to Rednex as to the Stray Cats, really, yet not really techno at all. I'm not sure WHAT to compare it to. (Where was he from again? And, related question, didn't the UK have a cheesy fake rockabilly revival in the '80s? How much did Culture Club/Bow Wow Wow/whatever style "new pop" influences fit into that? Hopefully a whole lot.)

"What I Wouldn't Give", ballad on new Blake Shelton album which I orignally thought was way too sappy, has an eerie spacious spare sound that I'm now a convert to. As does "She Can't Get That" maybe.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 6 May 2007 14:10 (nineteen years ago)

Maybe Jimmy Ray could be compared to "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" by Queen, or "Delerious" and/or "Horny Toad" by Prince? But he's maybe less rockabilly than the former, more than the latter. ("Tired of Toein' the Line" by Rocky Burnette??)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 6 May 2007 14:17 (nineteen years ago)

Also in the tradition of early '60s teenybopper fakeabilly by...I dunno, Bobby Rydell I guess? (How rockabilly were Fabian and Frankie Avalon at the time?) (Ricky Nelson is too authentic a comparison!)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 6 May 2007 14:21 (nineteen years ago)

Ha ha, "Way Low" on the Jimmy Ray album sounds kinda like if some semi-dancehall reggae guy like Shinehead attempted a rockabilly number with lots of Elvis hiccups in it. (Man, if the Wyclef song on the new Big'N'Rich sounded this cool, I'd be happy.)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 6 May 2007 14:34 (nineteen years ago)

And hmmm, Ray's "Look Inside Your Love" is either a BLATANT "Mmmbop" rip, or vice versa (they were both the same year, 1997! Anybody know which came first?)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 6 May 2007 14:44 (nineteen years ago)

So okay, I get it now -- What Blake Shelton is doing in his ballads (the two I mentioned a couple posts ago, and "I Have Been Lonely" too it turns out) is keeping up with the empty-honky-tonk post-Bakersfield sound of, obviously, Gary Allan; maybe some Mavericks and Dwight Yoakam in there too? And the non-ballad "The More I Drink," which I like a lot (guy says that drinking causes him to drink more -- it's self-perpetuating in other words, which is true!), has a little of Toby's barroom Dixieland jazziness in it. I also love "The Last Country Song," especially the bizarre, partially Bobby-Braddock-written this-was-our-land-til-"they"-took-it-away-from-us pathology of it (basically the idea is that "the city" is spreading out into spaces that used to be rural, which is of course true, but the subtext is uh, IMMIGRANTS, obviously -- fucked up especially given the chorus's Woody Guthrie reference), though I could live without John Anderson's and George Jone's gratutious cameos at the end. Also love the Chris Knight-penned loser anthem (featuring arson) "It Ain't Easy Bein' Me" (becoming a jerk is hard work!). Great album, overall - second only to his girlfriend's album as far as country albums this year go, as far as I'm concerned. (Bizarre, though: Up above I mentioned a sort of "We Didn't Start The Fire"-type catologue of baby-boom historical events song, and damned if I can figure out which track it is now! Maybe I just imagined it, or it's a hidden track way after the closer, or the shuffle function of my CD player confused me and it was someobody else entirely?? I keep tracking through the whole CD; where is it??)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 6 May 2007 16:02 (nineteen years ago)

And okay, I just figured something else out (when I should have been cooking chicken in the kitchen instead): Track 10 of Jimmy Ray's CD, "Free At Last," more "You Can't Hurry Love" and teenpop than rockabilly is on (actually, probably half of his tracks are rockabilly-free, especially the sort of miniature George Michael blue eyed soul numbers, like "Trippin On Baby Blue" etc), and I realized the real precedent for his bubblebilly is probably early '80s Brit pop stars Westworld, of "Sonic Boom Boy" fleeting fame. I liked them a lot, too! (Though sadly, I don't have their album anymore.)

AMG on Jimmy Ray:

Fusing a neo-rockabilly image with contemporary dance-pop rhythms, singer Jimmy Ray was born and raised in East London, where he grew up on a steady diet of classic Elvis, Cliff Richard and Tommy Steele singles. He later surfaced in a techno duo called A.V., recording an album which went unreleased; upon mounting a solo career, Ray was signed by manager Simon Fuller, the same impresario who launched the Spice Girls to superstardom. His debut single, "Are You Jimmy Ray?," was issued in the UK in late 1997, becoming a hit both at home and in the U.S.; a self-titled LP followed the next year.

AMG on Westworld:

Led by the other one from Generation X (not Billy Idol or Tony James, but guitarist Bob "Derwood" Andrews), Westworld also included American vocalist Elizabeth Westwood and drummer Nick Burton. Named after the 1973 Disneyland disaster film, the trio applied pop sensibilities to the punk and post-punk forms Andrews had been immersed in, and hit number 11 on the British charts with their 1987 single "Sonic Boom Boy." The group's only subsequent Top 40 success was "Ba-Na-Na-Bam-Boo," later that year, another single from the Westworld debut album Rockulator. Second album Beat Box Rock 'N' Roll followed in 1988, but 1991's Movers & Shakers was the trio's last.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 6 May 2007 16:32 (nineteen years ago)

And beyond that of course there's the whole dang rockabilly-party-on-saturday-night '50s revival coursing back through Brit TOTP pop at least as far back as glam rock, duh. (This is having less and less to do with "country" as I go on, isn't it? Sorry.) Hey kids summertime blues jump up and down in your blue suede shoes. (Wow, I just realized I don't think I've ever heard a Shakin' Stevens song.)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 6 May 2007 17:00 (nineteen years ago)

From teen-pop thread (where I should probably shift my Jimmy Ray talk to, now that I think of it):

Plus I just noticed that Jimmy's "Goin to Vegas" contains references to both "White Lines" by Grandmaster Flash (via "Let's Dance" by Bowie?) and whatever jump-blues song said "take it right back to the track, Jack" ("Choo Choo Ch'Boogie" by Louis Jordan, I think?) (So the mid '90s Cherry Poppin Daddies "swing revival" might figure here as well.)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 6 May 2007 17:42 (nineteen years ago)

One thing that helped his popology, liked it helped mine: he also managed a record store, I think, but didn't recruit his clerks for his band, unlike Hungry Chuck Cleaver or Whatchamacallit that ran The Coolies. What I like best about the song is that his chorus girls ask him, "Are you Link Wray? Are you Johnnie Ray?" or anyway drop their names, and he's somewhere in between those two (although not as intense as either), who are fave raves of mine.And both had something to do with country, in dif ways. Mentions a bunch of other Rays, but leaves out Barry Hannah's Ray, which is quite possibly the greatest novel ever written about or set in Tuscaloosa(how's that for classical qualified hyperbole)

― dow, Sunday, 6 May 2007 17:49 (nineteen years ago)

(listening to a song on the radio: haven't quite yet got who's doing what to whom, but it's a quietly shapely tune about stoned beauty, in the sunshine of your oblivious love, some velvet morning by your gate, and on TCM, Paul Newman's just met Piper Laurie, they're sitting in a booth in the bar in the gray daylight, they're talking and he's watching her get wasted, although she's getting her courage up, the stoned song baby's been there done that)("Morphine" something by Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, and this is a live show, they're way better live, has always been my impression)

― dow, Sunday, 6 May 2007 21:12 (nineteen years ago)

(Bizarre, though: Up above I mentioned a sort of "We Didn't Start The Fire"-type catologue of baby-boom historical events song, and damned if I can figure out which track it is now!

That's funny--when I'd finished listening to Pure BS the first time, I thought, "I must have missed that history song Chuck wrote about."
It would be interesting to hear something like that from someone other than Kenny Rogers--pretty much every line of that song makes me wince, particularly the Eminem reference. The Blake Shelton album is pretty great anyway.

― mulla atari, Monday, 7 May 2007 02:49 (nineteen years ago)

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