Thread for Lydia Loveless, Country-Rock Lady I Enjoy

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.

Yeah this is revealing:

Nearly two years before Loveless's post, she says, Miller told her "out of nowhere" that a female Bloodshot artist had confided in him that Panick was sexually harassing her. He didn't initially name the artist or get into specifics about Panick's misdeeds. Warshaw says those omissions left her powerless to rectify the situation and set her up to appear unsympathetic...

He adds that Warshaw should've known the allegations he'd originally shared involved Loveless. "I said it was an artist at our South by Southwest showcase that year," he explains. "Lydia was, that year, the only female artist. I assumed, falsely, that Nan could extrapolate that I didn't mean that the Waco Brothers were being harassed."

Stiener says that Loveless had only recouped $2,000 after three albums

@lydia_loveless
This is super corny, but I had a dream last night me and the band were on tour with DBT. It was one of those I am sad that isn’t real/sort of keeping me positive today dreams. I hope one day we can actually live real life again.
5:30 PM · Jan 31, 2021

@lydia_loveless
Also I wish I could say I am using this time to write the album of my dreams and be there for people, I’m actually consuming art and making it in a way that is equivalent to standing in front of the fridge naked and blasting reddiwhip into your mouth. I am not ok. But will be.

Lydia Loveless
@lydia_loveless
I’m currently at a school for audio engineering surrounded by people ten years younger than me and I’m amazed thinking about all the older people trying to bang me at that age. Please let young adults be young adults they are the future

Lydia Loveless
@lydia_loveless
Just got divorced and now have reached the age where all my peers are getting Christmas engaged lol
7:46 PM · Dec 26, 2021

Every time she tweets about her divorce there's a mob of reply guys.

Lydia Loveless
@lydia_loveless
I’ve been really hard on myself my entire life and it hasn’t really done me that much good. There was a decade or so where flogging myself internally furthered my career but now I’m just thinking maybe gentleness is what I need. New ye201ar more oily mental masturbation is my mantra
8:28 PM · Dec 31, 2021
210 likes
Lydia Loveless
@lydia_loveless
Just lubing up my sore brain and easing back from the ol socials and will see you when I’m a big sexy oil can again.
8:30 PM · Dec 31, 2021
112 likes

@lydia_loveless
This is super corny, but I had a dream last night me and the band were on tour with DBT. It was one of those I am sad that isn’t real/sort of keeping me positive today dreams. I hope one day we can actually live real life again.
5:30 PM · Jan 31, 2021

Welp

DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS LIVE 2022
* with special guest Lydia Loveless
APRIL
12 - Ponte Vedra, FL - Ponte Vedra Concert Hall *
14 - Augusta, GA - Imperial Theatre *
15 - Nashville, TN - Brooklyn Bowl Nashville *
16 - Nashville, TN - Brooklyn Bowl Nashville *
18 - Lexington, KY - The Burl (Outdoors) *
20 - Ashland, KY - Paramount Arts Center *
21 - Harrisburg, PA - Harrisburg Midtown Arts Center *
22 - Syracuse, NY - Westcott Theater *
23 - Ottawa, ON - Bronson Centre *
24 - Toronto, ON - Danforth Music Hall *
26 - Burlington, VT - Higher Ground *
28 - Boston, MA Royale *
29 - Asbury Park, NJ - Stone Pony *
30 - Philadelphia, PA - Brooklyn Bowl Philadelphia *

MAY
1 - Carrboro, NC - Cat’s Cradle *

Saw them play a set of mostly new solo/acoustic/fierce unabashedly queer songs. No idea if the songs will be recorded that way, but they really worked, going ina new direction from what I’d heard before.

Turns out one song I thought was new was from 2014: “Mile High.”

did yall see this:
https://pitchfork.com/news/lydia-loveless-announces-album-shares-video-for-new-song-toothless-watch/

that's great! very classic lydia loveless soaring chorus

Indeed! Looking forward.

been listening to the new one a lot, love it, never could get my arms around the last album

another new one from the upcoming album

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unm3vH9kwW8

Digging the new one right now...