Thread for Lydia Loveless, Country-Rock Lady I Enjoy

Although of course their ban claim does quite not fit w her for five years

it's pretty good! She's an interesting interview...some really great live footage

Maybe a bit long considering how relatively short her career is

also it's a bit awkward because at the time she's with her (a lot older) bass player and I think that divorce is a big part of the Real album? so it's a little outdated now

Would be no way to keep up with her, other than a day-to-day reality series. Yeah, even in email exchanges (for the featurette I posted way upthread), she was very forthcoming, without overselling or digressing---wish I'd had a little more room for quotes.

Big ol' interview re the Bloodshot situation

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-country/lydia-loveless-interview-sexual-misconduct-bloodshot-796785/

a few women commented on her IG story that they'd has incidents with this guy as well, at least one of them said she'd been sexually assaulted by him.

Her reasons for waiting are many, including how a woman’s claims of sexual abuse is often as traumatizing as the initial instances themselves. Also, because women are often told this is just “the way things are” in an industry built around casual social events, drinking and the myth of the eccentric male rock-star genius.

It's 2019 and people still believe this shit. I can see from the responses on Twitter that they do.

What exactly are you referring to as “this shit”?

"women are often told this is just “the way things are” in an industry built around casual social events, drinking and the myth of the eccentric male rock-star genius."

That's my (hopeful) guess.

Like, the immediate reaction I saw to the Ryan Adams revelations was a general "yeah, this dude is bad news" and "I'm glad this is coming out," but you only had to peel one layer deeper to find A LOT of people excusing all sorts of things.

https://www.savingcountrymusic.com/bloodshot-records-co-owner-nan-warshaw-officially-resigns-amid-harassment-scandal/

Sounds like she's close to wrapping up an album. Thank goodness, she's great.

Yay! meanwhile:
@lydia_loveless
kicks this off:
From 2016: Indigo Girls, Wynonna & the Big Noise, Patty Larkin and Lydia Loveless on Mountain Stage (radio radi-oh, don't wait for the podcast post on Tues.) https://mountainstage.org/radio/Pages/ontheradio.aspx?ontheradioid=95
(Wynonna killin it too)

This is only ok, imo, but it's great to have a summer that finally sees the return of Loveless, Kathleen Edwards, Gillian Welch and heck, even the Dixie Chicks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-cmPQ3BcnQ

I would agree it's not exceptional, but solid...feels like a side 2 album track.
that said, I love how she sings and the way she puts songs and lyrics together.
Really happy she's back.

Real grows in my estimation more and more as time passes.

Saw her opening to tMG last year and enjoyed it very much, so I happily preordered this and will await results.

yeah, excited to hear this album. SOMEWHERE ELSE is a classic, and REAL is great, too.

(that new album cover, though ... not great.)

How do I unsee this album cover?

Real has slowly become my favorite

Taking pre-orders, her first self-release, Sept. 25 (she recently tweeted pic of a cake her friend made, with this cover art https://lydialoveless.bandcamp.com/album/daughter

New one's her best.

oooh thanks!

i hope that's true but there's no way it's better than Somewhere Else

will report back if i am proven wrong

The title track is a particular stunner.

oh so this is just a re-release of the Boy Crazy EP and a handful of singles & bsides? the Boy Crazy EP is indeed fantastic. not sure I'm familiar with these other tunes in the second half. Wouldn't really compare this to her proper albums (Somewhere Else is my favorite, too).

https://www.bloodshotrecords.com/album/boy-crazy-singles

No, it's a whole new album of originals:

https://lydialoveless.bandcamp.com/album/daughter

lol I was so confused. Alfred way ahead as usual. Very excited for this one!

Yeah, and Boy Crazy + Single(s) is good too. Before I forget, the xpost doc is on nicely priced DVD (and Prime stream) here*, with lots of pleased purchaser reviews:
https://www.amazon.com/Lydia-Loveless-Who/dp/B074QVPDPQ/ref=sr_1_4?crid=34ORI9S6140VV&dchild=1&keywords=lydia+loveless&qid=1601053495&s=music&sprefix=Lydia+%2Cpopular%2C186&sr=1-4

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/81WZHdqs81L._SL1200_.jpg

*(also a sep listing for vinyl soundtrack)

"September" is gorgeous

So the new one returns to her consistently Columbus-to-Chicago urban country jangle, though now all in the searching, introspective singer-songwriter mode, though certainly more concisely compressed, candidly judicious than most such albums; she's not letting fly like "Idiot Wind" and bridge-barn-burning Natalie Maines. She's past that, going deeper/further/along in this remarkably shitty, damaged and damaging time, having apparently broken with her mate and Bloodshot too:
In a second floor apartment
The heat does rise
It’s a sensory bombardment
Sweat and tears in your eyes

Well isn’t this what everybody does
Go out on their own
I was the one who wanted more
Now I’m just sitting at home
---but even the most developmental tracks, incl. the strongest ones, "Daughter"
There’s never been a better time to be alive
The arms of opportunity are spread wide
I wanna be a part of you but it’s not enough
If I gave you a daughter would you open up

Oh to be like Mary full of grace
You’d be worshipping my body and my brain
Cuz I know you never take me at my word
It’s always something you’ve already heard
Why can’t I show you this side of me
And prove to you who I could be

There’s never been a better time to be a wife
I wanna show you something you can’t memorize---and the equally eerie finale, "Don't Bother Mountain," so far seem anchored tp Phil Collins-recalling drum atmospheres, though with her own deft production touches, and gray Morning After sources: no bad tracks, but I miss the headbanging sweat-it-out breakthroughs of yore---some wailing on "September," and her voice is strong, committed, all through, but overall effect so far a bit frustrating. I hope there will be more remixes.

Words can be amazing, music not as much.

It's all pretty slow, is what I mean.

Too cautious.

But I'll keep listening, prob get more involved in details, to some extent.

"Never" -- fabulous.

Yeah, the new one is really good.

This is the first year in ... years that I have not been able to keep up with all the good records I don't just think I need to hear but *want* to hear.

My first impression based on yesterday's afternoon listen is that her voice is too mix forward or something and kind of overpowers the rest of everything in a not great way. It's like a wet blanket.

First time through and agree with much of what's been said. I'm listening on shure iems and there are a few tunes, most notably "Can't Think," that sound super muddy beneath her vocals (somehow made even worse by some studio tricks in the last twenty seconds?). New producer/mixer appears to have done all the Jeff Tweedy associated production for the last decade, so surprised (https://www.allmusic.com/artist/tom-schick-mn0000934331). I thought the Bloodshot "sound" suited her well.

On the songwriting side, I like the second half more than the first. Side A has some downtempo tunes that lack the emotional gut punch of an "Everything's Gone." Side B has:
- "Never" - successful marriage of heartland rock and synth pop
- "When You're Gone" - really interesting structure without a clearly defined chorus (?) but still feels like a sing a long
- "September" - piano and cello ballad with some call and response help from Laura Jane Grace that works

All that to say, very hard to imagine Somewhere Else ever being impeached as my favorite of hers.

I will fall asleep and have fewer nightmares of death once I know that a Killer Psychiatrist is tucked away safely in a mental institution and led to believe he works there.

LL copes with late night-on-tour-to-quarantine anxieties via old faithful Lifetime:
https://www.nodepression.com/spotlight-lydia-loveless-on-leaning-into-lifetime-movies/?mc_cid=6035ce295f&mc_eid=b850f832a1

Might not have helped with the album though.

Enjoyed your review Alfred

Just skimmed this thread enough to be intrigued and really liking her stuff so thanks all.

Thank, ums!

Yeah. Wish I heard it more that way, maybe eventually.

okay now I do, should have stood by, as the President requests, and listened some more before maiden post. Helps that I came back to it after bandcamp streaming Boots 02: The Lost Songs Vol.2, by Gillian Welch, who is much closer, or more obviously (to this simple male mind) close to being a full-time inhabitant of this guarded, weathered truck garden of love and regret, the one with no-frills flights on a leash (and both artists' current sets sport fine September ramblin' bridge songs), but now I get that Loveless is more confrontational, just as intimate, but in a clinch, noting the marks she's leaving and has and will leave---and though, no "headbanging sweatbox catharis" as I prev. missed these flights do achieve liftoff into that LL narrative momentum:
I can’t believe the worst kinds of people achieve
Everything they want
But it takes medication to get me off

So sick and tired of living in a rut

Love is not enough
I wonder if it ever was
I shouldn’t have to bleed you dry to fill me up
Not that she's letting him off the hook---ooo, always wanting her tp provide a little "sun," like,"Smile more often, " like the Bossman say---and the way she gets from opening with:
What is my body worth to you
Without your blood in it
to closing time:
If I gave you a daughter would you open up,
and all points in between, as ZZ Top would put it, via LL wide-awake dream logic, relentlessly articulate---is true grit poetry, LL as hell, incl. Loretta Lynn talking points.
And seems more like To Be Continued than total closer (she's tweeted something about pregnancy).
The music, as written, arranges and performed-inhabited, now carries me through the words much more than on first listen, and the last track's dark groove, pushing on falling back pushing on, also seems like something To Be Continued---still hoping for more remixes, for one thing.

Tangential to Loveless, but I had no idea the extent of this mess:

https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/bloodshot-records-nan-warshaw-rob-miller-royalties-sale/Content?oid=84834310

ugh

Forgot about all that for a little bit

Warshaw’s excuse for not doing anything about her partner’s harassment is pathetic.