Top 20 of 2009: #10-1
Posted on | December 31, 2009 | 1 Comment
Here is some of the music that struck me in 2009. In case you missed it, read the manifesto for this site. It might help you understand where I am coming from. If you didn’t see the Bird List, now might be a good time to check it out.
This music should be kept in museums. The finale of his trilogy on grace and forgiveness, and not a bit cheesy. Read the original review.
The only American member of the band continues to show people around his homeplace, 40 years and counting. Read the original review.
Building on what he started with his first record, JTE’s pen gets deeper and wiser. Read a single review.
One of the best young voices in country harnesses his rocking sound with a little 60’s touch. Read a single review.
Rollicking good time from an indie rocker exploring the music he grew up on.
Most of the time we hear stories from the big cities of America. These are stories from the areas in between. Read a single review.
Don Was strips Todd down, pulls him together, and puts out his most consistent record yet. Read the original review.
Lovett uses his keen eye for songs and delicate touch, as always to great effect. Read the original review.
Cowboy beat poet ruminates on the American west and the history that lies beneath. Read the original review.
Rawlings proves that quality always trumps quantity, with a 9-song record that stuns from beginning to end. Read the original review.
Album Review: Lyle Lovett – Natural Forces
Posted on | October 20, 2009 | 1 Comment
1. Could Lyle Lovett be loosening up? His remarkable consistency and ability to execute a multiple genres with his Large Band has always been present, but on his latest release Natural Forces, he shows a little bit of frayed edges, edgy humor, and an endearingly carefree attitude, while still ably interpreting songs from his Texas songwriting heroes in his classic style. Lovett, who turns 53 next month, brings back his ace studio band including Viktor Krauss, Matt Rollings, Sam Bush, Stuart Duncan, and Dean Parks to drive a record that seems a little more loose than his usual buttoned-up style.
2. Opening with the title track, which I reviewed here, Lovett quickly moves into a pair of tracks seeping with innuendo — the racy “Farmer Brown/Chicken Reel”, which features his whole band singing along on the chorus, and the more subtle, but no less provocative “Pantry”, co-written with longtime girlfriend April Kimble. Both of these tracks feature his studio band, who walk the line between uptempo jazz and juke-joint rhythm on the former, and launch into a fiddle-driven shuffle on the latter.
3. Lovett approches more familiar territory on the calm caveat of “Empty Blue Shoes”, and on his take of Eric Taylor’s nostalgic “Whooping Crane”. Taylor, a hero of Lovett’s, is one of six Texas-based songwriters that Lyle covers here, drawing comparison to his double-record covers compilation Step Inside This House. Lyle leads his band through a waltz of Louisiana imagery on Don Sanders’ “Bayou Song”, and allows Dean Parks to lay down some scorching slide on the swinging “Bohemia”, which pushes his thin voice to a new soulful level.
4. Rollings’ sparkling piano and Paul Franklin’s weepy pedal steel give David Ball’s “Don’t You Think I Feel It Too” an appropriate setting for his jilted narrator, for whom “the blues just keep coming”. The same spare treatment is given to Vince Bell’s “Sun and Moon and Stars”, likely introduced to Lovett by way of Nanci Griffith. This song, an admittance of loneliness by a character who has managed to put it off for a long time, shows Lovett’s ability to interpret a song, surrounding with just enough instrumentation to support the confessional lyrics. His standard take on Townes Van Zandt’s “Loretta” doesn’t add a whole lot to the song, but layers on his jazzy western style, with a piano and fiddle accompaniment that set it firmly in the Lovett canon. Closing with “It’s Rock and Roll”, a co-write with longtime friend Robert Earl Keen, Lyle cuts the band loose, with an overdriven arrangement that proves the title true and finds a home somewhere between Delbert McClinton and ZZ Top. The addition of an acoustic version of “Pantry” shows the versatility of his band, specifically the prowess of Sam Bush, but doesn’t add a whole lot else to the record.
5. Lyle Lovett is an artist who has developed a musical style all his own. That said, he continues to innovate on this style, exploring both the bluegrass sounds he flirted with on his last record as well as an amplified sound that hasn’t shown up much since his first record. Though an artist who pushes forward musically at Lovett’s age deserves a certain amount of respect, he extends his reputation by picking songs from his heroes that fit perfectly with his own songs, blurring the line between the inspiration and the product. Natural Forces is a record that shows both deep roots and a lighthearted sensibility, wrapped in the smirking Lovett delivery, and shouldn’t disappoint fans old or new.
Lyle Lovett – “Natural Forces”
Posted on | October 14, 2009 | 2 Comments
1. First and foremost, Lyle Lovett is a cowboy. Aside from declaring that on several songs, he owns and operates a working ranch in Klein, TX, on land that his family has owned for years. That said, it should be understood that he knows a thing or two about land ownership. His new single, the title track from his upcoming record Natural Forces, distinguishes between owning the land and being owned by the land. Lovett understands that there are laws that he cannot control, and for every force that drives him to work the land, there is an equal and opposite pull away from any sense of domesticity and stillness, a wild freedom whose calling proves irresistible for many men.
2. Lyle begins, naturally, by telling us the story a cowboy over a loping beat. His usual roster of A-list musicians knows exactly how to support and stay out of the way of a good story, keeping the song moving, with an agile mix of fiddle, guitar, and the dry thump of drums. Lovett’s cowboy crosses the plains, “bidding his former life goodbye”. As he turns down the unknown woman who offers him a way out, he declares:
“It’s on my steed I will rely/
I’m underneath the auburn sky
I’m subject to the natural forces/
My home is where my horse is”
Lovett continues by modernizing the tale, as a trucker heads to the west coast from Buffalo, experiencing the freedom of crossing America. Exchanging the horse for an 18-wheeler, the feeling loses none of its untamed pedigree. Changing tack to address the humility of Native Americans, he rattles off a short list of tribes who “volunteered to move, they say”. Lovett praises the people, unjustly removed from their lands, who are able to say that their home is where their horse is, though they quietly believe that “we’ll understand come Judgment Day”.
3. Though this would all make a very nice parallel about ownership, duty, and responding to the pull of the wild, Lovett sharpens his pencil and turns the camera on himself. Sitting “safe at home, with a cold Coors Light and the T.V. on”, Lovett hopes that he is “worth fighting for”, and praises the soldier that continues until “Earth and Hell are satisfied”. Addressing his own feeling of entitlement makes the song entirely personal, drawing a line in the sand between those who pursue their calling and those who don’t. Willing to put himself on the wrong side of that line to prove a point, Lovett questions what it means to respond to a sense of duty in all aspects of the word. Lovett has always had the ability to tell a story by tracing the edges and letting the listener fill in the gaps. Here he is a little more direct, perhaps due to the wisdom that comes with age. As he matures his sound, he increases his mastery of the wit and clarity that has sustained him this far. I wish more artists were willing to draw blood like this.
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