Rolling Country 2006 Thread

Not familiar with Original Sin. I've got a couple hodgepodgy odds-and-sods CDs (I Have Been To Heaven And Back: Hen's Teeth And Other Lost Fragments of Unpopular Culture Vol. 1 and Where Were You: Hens Teeth Etc Etc Vol. 2 that include sundry rare early tracks among sundrier live ones and so on; somewhere in storage I also have Punk Rock, I think it's called, where they entertainingly re-record a bunch of their punk-era stuff -- my Fear and Whiskey CD leaves that great album intact; a few of those early tracks also show up on the two-disc Heaven And Hell: The Very Best of the Mekons, which also has all I'll ever need of their widely acclaimed '90s and '00s stuff, which I've honestly never really understood the appeal of), but anyway, I think with those early EPs, I also miss the actual objects, you know? Though I do think they were doing their best music back then; my favorite album by them {used to have it on vinyl, now on CD} is 1980's The Mekons, a/k/a {for no reason I've ever figured out} Devils Rats and Piggies. And I actually found The Mekons Story fun back in the day; wish I'd kept my vinyl copy of that one too. I assume Lester Bangs liked it too, since he wrote the liner notes, in which he claimed it to be the best album in the world this side of Metal Machine Music and/or something by Black Oak Arkansas, I forget which. So blah blah blah. After Edge of The World, for me, they had more trouble holding my attention.

pretty good, a bit genteel in the vocal department. really gets going about track 10 with "san franciscop mabel joy" and "you've always got the blues." who can tell me what the best newbury record from the '70s is? xgua gives neither one he grades in his '70s guide above B-. He says, "Never trust meteorological symbolism," and sure enough kacey jones' record has these rain sounds in it...

speaking of nashville humanist songwriters, bobby braddock has a new autobiography coming out, "down in oberndale," (pretty sure that's spelled correctly) which is pidgin southern for auburndale, fla., where he grew up. what are the great *songwriter* autobiographies?

And Pitbull's El Mariel didn't make the ballot in the "Hip-Hop" category. And Ms. Peachez "Fry That Chicken" didn't make the ballot under videos.

The Kentucky Headhunters – Flying Under The Radar (CBUJ reissue)*
Becky Hobbs – Best Of The Beckaroo Part 1 (Beckaroo reissue)
Shawn Camp – Fireball (Skeeterbit)
Hacienda Brothers – What’s Wrong With Right (Proper)
Terry Lee Bolton – American Man (MRC)
Alan Bros. Band – Brick By Brick (Alan Bros. Music)

New Bill Kirchen album sounds pretty dang good so far, too. Kentucky Headhunters just made the top 10 (not just country, everything) album list I submitted to the poll for my current employer. As did Leanne Kingwell's album, but we decided she's not country despite being indie right? As did Victory Brothers, who are definitely both, but they are not from A to L in the alphabet. As did Montgomery Gentry and Toby Keith, who are country but not indie (and Huck Johns, who may or might be country and/or indie, but probably not). And so on.

Bill Kirchen's album is more rock and soul and blues than anything I've heard by him before. Great title (and rocking title track): Hammer Of The Honky Tonk Gods. He does "Devil With A Blue Dress On" as a slow shuffle, closes with an Arthur Alexander song.

Oy vey. Me upthread:

I finally listened to this here Kasey Jones album of Mickey Newbury songs. Uggh. Useful if only to have all the worst versions of Newbury's songs in one place.

I think genteel is the best thing you can say about it. To my ears it's basically Mancini Americana, with a vocalist who may as well be parsing a phone book from Kazakistan, for all she seems to understand what she's singing.

The best Newbury album from the '70s remains Frisco Mabel Joy (and the tribute to that album that came out a few years ago >>>> than this Kacey Jones record). Most of his '60s and '70s stuff gets swamped in confused, faux-Sherrill arrangements (and I love real Sherrill), so buyer beware. But Mabel Joy is classic. Also, the double album, Live at Montezuma Hall anticipates his most intense and purely beautiful album, from the late '90s, the solo/live Nights When I Am Sane. This is not background music; he sings the living fuck out of every line.

Alejandro Escovedo - The Boxing Mirror (Back Porch)
Band Of Horses - Everything All The Time (Sub Pop)
Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - The Letting Go (Drag City)
Calexico - Garden Ruin (Quarterstick)
Califone - Roots & Crowns (Thrill Jockey)
Drive-By Truckers - A Blessing And A Curse (New West)
Eef Barzelay - Bitter Honey (SpinART)
Horse Feathers - Words Are Dead (Lucky Madison)
Jenny Lewis w/ The Watson Twins - Jenny Lewis w/ The Watson Twins (Team Love)
Jolie Holland - Springtime Can Kill You (Anti-)
M. Ward - Post-War (Merge)
Neko Case - Fox Confessor Brings The Flood (Anti-)

(the Plug Independent Music Awards link, if you're interested in voting.

Well, actually...Freaky Friday must be over now because the Kirchen album's sounding a lot duller to me today than it was a couple days ago. Just kinda stodgy and slow and colorless, and the title track doesn't really kick all that hard after all, and why the hell would anybody want to slow down "Devil With a Blue Dress On," come to think of it? So right now, I'm on the fence, but maybe it'll kick back in, or maybe it won't. What basically keeps happening is, well, it's in the five-disc changer now with the Game (clunky rap voice, ocassionally tasty and tasteful retro-soul backup, sounds very Dr. Dre a lot of it no matter what Dre's involvement was or wasn't, but I never gave much a shit about Dre give or take a couple songs so I doubt I'll have much more patience with this thing), Yabby You (who sounds warm and dubby and greater than I would have guessed), Borat (just saw the movie, which was slightly disappointing though still frequently hilarious but maybe the disappointment was just that it had been built up so much by so many people, but at any rate i also just realized today that the soundtrack is a compilation, and track #7 is beautiful, and i think it's by o.m.f.o. but it's hard to tell because there are not the same number of titles on the cover as tracks on the cd, since some of the tracks are just snippets of dialouge and stuff, so you can't just count down to the seventh title, which is "grooming pubis", and also "o kazakhastan" which ends the movie sounds more like laibach than most of the national anthems on laibach's own new album) and joe gruschecky (ex of the iron city houserockers, and his new album features bruce springteen on a few tracks and while i have no doubt that this album must blow out of the water that springsteen seeger covers album which must be the most boring idea for an album of the year even though i didn't listen to the thing since life is too fucking short, but gruschecky is still not writing them like he was in 1980 or 1981 and his band barely rocks at all, dude really needs to befriend kenny aranoff or somebody, though sometimes there's some passable drama in joe's oily sobersided sincerity and the guitar buildups in a way that a couple of the tracks like "safe at home" for instance might sound decent in a "rescue me" episode or perhaps a scene from "the wire" with mcnulty fucking up again), and oftimes when a kirchen song comes on i think it's gruschecky by mistake, which is frankly not a good sign.

and the more I hear of the new Intocable album Cruce de Caminos a.k.a. Crossroads the more I fall in love with it. Johnny Lee Rosas might have the best voice in America, because it's not quite perfect but DAMN he delivers the goods. hilariously, when they do a "pop" version of huge hit single "Por Ella," it lays on the country signifiers so thick that I think maybe they actually consider modern country to be the real sound of "pop" in the U.S. but sadly for y'all, it's all in Spanish, so you won't really care about it. (P.S. I am an asshole tonight.)

The Game and Gruschecky now replaced in the changer with Fairyland (French-I-think metal band on Napalm) and new Ying Yang Twins.

"One More Day" on the Kirchen album does have a nice Dock Boggs era white country blues feel to it, I guess. And I do like the Arthur Alexander cover. So I haven't written the thing off quite yet.

I've been considering springing for the Intocable CD, actually. I probably won't mind the Spanish of it if the tunes are catchy enough.

Sounds like a hell of a lot of work to get through...(What do they think they are, a hip-hop group or something?) (I hate great values!)

Kirchen's "Hammer of The Honky Tonk Gods" title cut kicks (or at least "signifies kicking") in a Junior Brown kind of way, I guess. There's something sorta deluded about it -- half of Nashville rocks harder; hell, Kellie Pickler might rock harder -- but it's not bad.

kirchen's record has the same faults as his show i saw this fall. he's real good for about two songs. his supposedly awesome guided tour of pop where he interpolates all the licks he knows is actually pretty great, but seemed empty even with a couple beers in me. you kind of wish he'd go johnny guitar watson and write more songs about more interesting and perhaps raffish reality. the songs blur in my mind. the curse of reverence and "americana" and all that, but he's been at it for a while just like nick lowe, who used to write about more interesting and raffish reality but now is a very good genre artist. we all love arthur alexander, man. (i love nick lowe, but the last record of his i found remotely interesting was "party of one," which is what, 1990?)

(Hey Frank brought the album up! I guess I should put all this on the world music thread too. I'm not sure what it has to do with country, though yeah, there's a twang in the music now and then, and didn't one of you guys vote for Gogol Bordello in a Nashville Scene poll once? This CD belongs on a shelf near them, Kultur Shock, Balkan Beatbox, etc, unless like me you file in alphabetical order.)

And my new maybe-favorite on Kirchen's CD is "Skid Row in My Mind."

ha ha, for me it was labour of lust in 1979! (though i guess i gave nick the knife or whatever a fairly mixed review for my college paper in missouri when it came out, a few years later.)

ghostfinger, a nashville (actually murfreesboro, tn.) band, does really cool country-rock pastiches. the singer sounds like jagger or arthur lee or some white guy trying to be soulful, and it's mostly funny. they get doleful and sometimes the rockers don't quite work, but "moon" alternates sections of fake-rock and country-rock quite effectively. can't make out what it is they're exactly trying to express, but get the feeling they're a bit more than the usual history lesson. it's been a good year for nashville pop bands--lone official, the features, ghostfinger and i guess lambchop, too, have all released good records. certainly, lone official's "tuckassee take" made my no depression top 20 new releases.

and i have to say that i've listened to neko case's record (which also made my ND list) as much as i have anything this year; the songs are better than i initially thought, and she sustains a *mood* throughout that sorta skirts desolation--the line about driving past the beautiful flooded fields resonates as they say with my experience. and it's one of the great records in 6/8, a time signature she manipulates savvily and which suggests, i guess, the timelessness (or the immersion in memory) she's going after.

So this Dixie Chick flick, Shut Up and Sing, is playing in town. Should I go? That whole brouhaha seems like decades ago.

did the ND Ballots go out already?

Do we know yet if the Scene poll is dead? Is Himes gonna do it elsewhere? I mean, he's got the rolls...

And I know this has been chattered about elsewhere, but I never got a clear answer: what's to become of Pazz n Jop?

New George Strait album Twang. The First single "Living For The Night" is so classic. Any thoughts?