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.
Five Records with… Will Kimbrough
Posted on | October 2, 2009 | 1 Comment
I had the chance to talk to Will Kimbrough the other day. Singer, guitar slinger, songwriter, co-leader of Daddy, and occasional sideman and producer to Rodney Crowell and Todd Snider, Kimbrough hails from Alabama and consistently finds himself mixed up with terribly exciting music. Five Records is an occasional feature of artists talking about the music that inspires them. Read more of these posts here.
“I saw Bruce play on May 1, 1976 for my 12th birthday in Mobile, Alabama. The ticket was $4.50, my first guitar was $20 and I never looked back. I played my first show at a skating rink. Anyone who bought the 30th anniversary edition and saw the DVD saw the show the way I saw it – no special effects, nothing that blows up – just a charismatic lesson in what to do, how to be down to earth, how to reach people.”
“I admire the way Rodney reinvented himself at age 50 — his songwriting is as good as ever, but his music took a step up. Just being around him, he is uncompromising without being a jerk. You can go to Rodney’s show and he might not play any of the hits from the 80’s that people know him for, but he still blows his audiences away, and that’s hard to do.”
“I listened to a lot of J.J. Cale while making this last Daddy record — I love how he is able to take the simplest thing and make it interesting. Tommy and I always start Daddy records by getting together and writing something and building off of that. “Love In a Bottle” was heavily inspired by JJ.”
“I wish I had written “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry”. It’s just beautiful – the nature imagery in “The silence of a falling star/ Lights up a purple sky” and the raw way Hank delivers it as only he can make it such a classic. He really wrote poetry for common people by being able to take common things and put them to simple melodies.”
“Justin just keeps improving. He was given a great opportunity due to his bloodlines, but he absolutely lives up to it. You can see it in his work ethic, the way he gets after it, and the way he appreciates the music that came before him. Midnight at the Movies was a great step forward from his first record, which was fantastic as well.”
Album Review: Kris Kristofferson – Closer to the Bone
Posted on | September 22, 2009 | 1 Comment
1. There’s a reason you don’t hear Kris Kristofferson on country radio: his music is way too raw. Kristofferson claims to be concerned first and foremost with the truth, and his last two records have shown that he wants to put little in the way of that. If mainstream country radio cannot handle that, then so be it — their loss. On the title track for his new record Closer to the Bone he tells us the way its going to be:
“Comin’ from the heartbeat/
nothing but the truth now/
everything is sweeter/
closer to the bone”
2. Don Was, who also produced Todd Snider’s excellent record this year, carefully constructed a similar setup around Kris. Careful not to let anything get in the way of the unadulterated power of the songs, he brought in veteran drummer Jim Keltner and longtime Kristofferson sidekick Stephen Bruton, who makes his final contribution to this world with his excellent guitar and mandolin playing. Though not as intentionally rough-around-the-edges as Kris’ last record, the endearingly out-of-tune This Old Road, the songs shake with an acoustic strength that chooses to let the words speak in favor of musical dynamics. While Johnny Cash’s late work with Rick Rubin found him covering Soundgarden, old hymns, and classic favorites, the words pour out of Kristofferson like never before, as he shares wisdom, hope, and gratitude in a way that only a 73-year-old man can.
3. Kristofferson has lived through too much to shy away from anything, but certainly not in a pessimistic way. These songs show his appreciation for the more difficult moments in life, and the metamorphosis that they provide. One of the two living Highwaymen (and the other may never die), he pays tribute to one of his fallen band mates in “Good Morning John”. He offers congratulations to the Man in Black for all that he accomplished, now that his future is “shining brighter than a star”. Kris tried to cut the song with the Highwaymen, but when it came time for Willie to sing the plaintive line “I love you, John”, the Red Headed Stranger couldn’t make himself do it.
4. With 73 years comes plenty of loss, as Kris sings about in “Hall of Angels”, all the more weighted by Bruton’s passing shortly after the completion of the record. Detailing a scene of men gathered to console another man’s loss (the masterfully vague “a lady who loved him and died”), a stranger approaches with a song. The stranger, who lost a girl he loved “more than her mother or anything else in the world”, dreamed of a group of angels with burning candles, minus his lost girl. Asking why hers was not lit, the angels tell him that his tears “keep drowning the flame”. While some songwriters might surround a heavenly dream with all sorts of production, Kristofferson gets it done with a simple key change.
5. This album is not for the faint of heart. It contains no songs about country people, barroom bad decisions, or about automobiles of any kind. Instead, Kris doesn’t waste a second in relating that life is as much about the hard challenges you face (”Let The Walls Come Down”) as much as it is about the people you are surrounded with (”The Wonder”). Life certainly is unpredictable, but I hope to get many more records out of this legend.
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