NASHVILLE SCENE COUNTRY MUSIC CRITICS POLL

TOP TEN COUNTRY ALBUMS OF 2020:

 (just in the order they come to mind)

1. Elizabeth Cook: Aftermath

2. Ashley McBryde: Never Will

3. Brandy Clark: Your Life Is A Record

4. Katie Pruitt: Expectations

5. Willie Nelson: First Rose of Spring

6. Waylon Payne: Blue Eyes, The Harlot, The Queer, The Pusher, & Me

7. Whitney Rose: We Still Go To Rodeos

8. Gretchen Peters: The Night You Wrote That Song: The Songs of Mickey Newbury

9. Pam Tillis: Looking for a Feeling 

10. Cam: The Otherside

TOP FIVE COUNTRY REISSUES OF 2020:

1, Gillian Welch: Boots No. 2: The Lost Songs Vols.1-3

2. Johnny Cash: Easy Rider: The Best of the Mercury Recordings

3. Doc Watson and Gaither Carlton: s/t

4.

5.

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST DUOS, TRIOS OR GROUPS OF 2020:

1. The Chicks

2. The Tender Things

3. Steve Earle & The Dukes

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST NEW ACTS OF 2020:

1. Katie Pruitt

2. Caylee Hammack

3.

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IMAGINARY CATEGORIES:

SPECIAL CITATION: AUDIO-VIDEO ALBUM:

 Chicks: Gaslighter

TOP NINE MORE BEST COUNTRY ALBUMS OF 2020:

11. Caylee Hammack: If It Wasn't For You

12. Marshall Chapman: Songs I Can't Live Without

13. Lori McKenna: The Balladeer

14. Tender Things: How You Make A Fool

15. Margo Price: Perfectly Imperfect At The Ryman

16. Steve Earle/Dukes: Ghosts of West Virginia

17. Jake Blount: Spider Tales

18. Shelby Lynn: s/t

19. Swamp Dogg: Sorry You Couldn't Make It

HON. MENTION/BUBBLING UNDER THE TOP 19:

Ashley Ray: Pauline

Clint Black: Out of Sane

Zephaniah Ohoro:  Listening To The Music

Wynonna: Recollection EP

Mickey Guyton: Bridges EP 

ABOUT HALF GOOD (60-45%):

Carly Pearce: s/t

John Anderson: Years

Chris Stapleton: Starting Over

LESS THAN HALF GOOD:

Margo Price: That's How Rumors Get Started 

Jamie Wyatt: Neon Cross

Hailey Whitters: The Dream

Kelsea Ballerini: Kelsea

RELATED TOP ELEVEN:

1  Lucinda Williams: Good Souls, Better Angels

2. Jason Isbell/400 Unit: Reunions

3. Richard Thompson: Bloody Noses EP

4. Maria McKee: La Vita Nuova

5. Nancy McCallion: Go To Ground

6. Randall Bramblett: Pine Needle Fire 

7. Chuck Prophet: The Land That Time Forgot

8. Dave Miller: s/t

9. Drive-By Truckers: The New OK

10. Drive-By Truckers: The Unraveling

11. Lydia Loveless: Daughter

RELATED HON MENTION/BUBBLING UNDER THE TOP ELEVEN    

 Becky Warren: The Sick Season

 Kelsey Waldon: They'll Never Keep Us Down EP

 Orkesta Mendoza/Carrie Rodriguez: iAmericano!: The Musical

"Dylan Is His Own Category"(Frank Kogan):

.Bob Dylan: My Rough and Rowdy Ways

Good'uns Added After Ballot Deadline/Subjects For Further Study:

S. G. Goodman: Old Time Feeling

H. C. McEntire: Eno Axis

RaeLynn: Baywater EP

Joe Ely: Love In The Midst of Mayhem

RELATED TOP FOUR REISSUES:

1. Grateful Dead: Workingman's Dead (50th Anniversary Ed.) 

2. Dave Alvin: From An Old Guitar: Rare and Unreleased Recordings 

3. Leyla McCalla: Vari-Colored Songs: A Tribute To Langston Hughes 

4. Chris Smither: More from the Levee

"Little Richard's Reissue Is Its Own Category" (me):

.Little Richard: Southern Child

HON MENTON RELATED REISSUES

Dave Alvin: Live at Yep Roc 15 

Dave Alvin & Phil Alvin: Live from Austin EP

Neil Young: Homegrown

ABOUT HALF GOOD RELATED REISSUES:

Randall Bramblett: The Meantime (10th Anniversary Ed.) Take Me Back to the Range: Selections from Western Jubilee Recording Company  

RELATED TO RELATED (kissin' second cousins)

The Third Mind: s/t 

Minute2Minute: Travelers, Transients, & Tourists

Bettye LaVette: Blackbirds

Comments, incl. some orig ilxor posts:

Top Ten Country Albums

 (the Cook stuff prob goes on longer than re any other releases):

Living with

Elizabeth Cook album Aftermath out 9/11, according to Australia Rolling Stone. Produced by Butch Walker. New single (w link to video in article): In "Perfect Girls of Pop," Cook mines a vein of restless, jangling college rock, but Bevis & Butthead might not object: bass & drums sound upfront here, guitar also goes to deeper twang at times (and her voice keeps it kinda country, ditto sad frustrated lyrics, given strong broody ominous support by music)(walkie-talkie dispatch, injected from her site: If you think too much it's the land of indecision if you don't think enough it's the imprecision I guess I just don't understand the form)Also has track list etc. (did not know that she has a fishing and interview show): https://au.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/elizabeth-cook-perfect-girls-of-pop-new-album-aftermath-12987/

I like Elizabeth Cook's new one. She finally escaped Nashville gravity, suited up like Bowie in the empty spaces of our great country. https://www.nashvillescene.com/music/features/article/21143243/elizabeth-cook-takes-country-music-as-her-subject-on-aftermath

― eddhurt,

I've held off on reading Edd's Elizabeth Cook coverage, not wanting to be influenced while trying to wrap my own ears and brain around Aftermath, which I *think* I'm getting/is blowing mah mahnd: right off, and the more I listen, it sounds like de- and re-constructed (might be some implicit historical irony in there) country, the keyword being "country"---her voice: accent, timbre, phrasing, also phrasing of countriod words, themes, narrative, along with elements of tune and instrumentation---all getting the sonic patent medicine treatments---Hank and co. back on the Hadacol Express, comin' round the mountain ("They'll all come to see her when she comes"? Cook sings something like that), via some kind of style-associative space-time warp/refraction (for instance, puckering into quiet eye clarity after much sweaty-to-feverish, intent hookstorm voyaging---fluttering in the dented chrome wake of for instance "Stanley By God Terry", which first came out of her sweet childhood barstool views of the grown-ups playing tunes, and follows them down the long country highway of yesterday's bad and badder news, with no turns left to take, just rolling on).

Edd mentions Bowie in his post of the link: yeah, could see that, like Bowie cutting up the 70s and some of his favorite sounds---also Sturgill, especially on Sound and Fury, with his own unmistakably country voice and 'tude, bringing a "vintage" sound that never quite was, an alt.universe electro-pop-boogie express that I tagged ZZ Rex when it streaked through here last year.

And if Aftermath is Bowieoid futuristic, a future that never quite was, outside of pulp frames, yet tapped again for its kozmik sexy space suit flotation appeal, pushing off from the walls, as he did it, why not now, when we know, as Bowie said, and more than ever, that whatever future there will be, won't be this cool, for the most part, if any. Suspect Cook's got that in there too, one way or another.

(later) Of course country, born as a genre in the 1920s, has traditionally had to respond to the existence of other genres, either making room for/re-adjusting elements of those, or making them conspicuous absences---meaning, you know, pop country, and the kind more likely favored by No Dep, and the kind that plays county fairs and cover-song bars etc. These Cook and Simpson albums are good examples of how to do it, how to make use of rock etc.--not the only way, but good--unlike most of Margo Price's That's How Fleetwood Mac and 70s Third Tier Top 40 Rumors Get Started, which works sometimes, but bad on you for producing, Sturgill, even if you were just doing what she wanted.

(later still)Got the CD of E.C.'s Aftermath, to wrap my head around it w/o the distractions of YouTube, although it sounds---great? on there, not sure, so freaky, despite the fact that it's only country-as-hell phrasing (vocal and writing) tropes, mashed in w other perspectives on female experience in what's left and right of the Land o' Cotton (incl. Mather, also mentions Daddy Increase), with the aforementioned familiar instrumentation, and yes she latches on to thee rootsier rhythms of Zep, also "Don't Fear The Reaper" etc.--all of which works okay on the mp3 that came w CD, but on the boombox I must have lots of bass with enhanced treble "surround"---so the words get crowded, but she's got 'em all on her site (also those of Exodus of Venus), and they deserve clarity---as I read while I listen, I hear 'em perfectly, imagine that---check here: https://www.elizabeth-cook.com/aftermath

Oh yeah, and the wry, rueful pellucid, flickering closer, "Mary, The Submissing Years," (after the Cotton Mather-pickin,' flay-rockin', "Rabies" with "scabies" with "babies" rhymer "Half-Hung Mary," based on a poem by Margaret Atwood) sounds quite different from all above, and yet not, considering the way it (now more quietly) flexes poise and sense---she says it's inspired by Prine's "Jesus, The Missing Years," amen to that.

PS: I tried the Cook CD in a more modern boombox, more options (playing and recording from MP3 etc.)---tried several EQ presets and they all sound good, bringing vocals into the foreground w no instruments too close. Panasonic RX-D55. Not every word is crystal clear, but might be intentional, so as to encourage more listening. The overall effect always has been expressive and expressionist, with neuro-skeletal hooks that wake up and scuttle through my typing when it's under the most pressure, of trying to turn into writing. Although some hooks are more conceptual than sonic, even: One woman---who might be an actress, an escort, a mistress, a multiple agent, a moving target of yet another kind---carries much info, openly notes the way the planet is going in strange night weather, recalling a drive down the coast from Hollywood, in The Last Tycoon)(not too far from the girl that Stahr takes to his unfinished dream house, the cage for his Great Love, now RIP)

In one last attempted sum: Soulful post-sadcore sweaty silver spacesuit tequila moon ring fireletter survey country for an electoral and census year, back from the future, whut's left of it. Get it while you can.

Well okay---from later email to Edd:

yes...(memory as fuel)...getting feverish at times...set the controls for the heart of the sun...as w Page, Prince, Bowie when he's good...and ...totally her...lots of other nice things

For thots on Cook's Exodus of Venus and associable 2016 releases, incl. Lucinda Williams', see "Temporary Like A Lifer"

https://www.nodepression.com/album-reviews/temporary-like-a-lifer-more-from-my-nashscene-ballot-comments/

(Rolling tribute thread, watch this space:

https://www.texasmonthly.com/the-culture/jerry-jeff-walker-remembered-by-lyle-lovett-lucinda-williams-dan-rather-and-many-many-others/

Meant to paste a quote, but impossible to choose---lots of eyewitness testimony, going waaay back. See also my bit on him, when he was coming to Charlotte: https://myloaf.blogspot.com/2017/02/keep-texas-beautiful-jerry-jeff-walker.html)

 TOP TEN comments cont:

Ashley McBryde, Never Will: now that I've listened several times, the title reminds me of Sun Ra's Nothing Is, only more so, because it's a grower---not a grabber, but a taste worth acquiring. Also, her second , self-released set was Elsebound, oooo---but don't get thee wrong idea, bub, she ain't no Star Trek gyrl---arrival on Warner Nashville was---tah-dahhh!---Girl Going Nowhere.

This is so country that it may be post-country, not in terms of tunes and arrangements, but lyrics and singing. especially considering what's expected of young female artists, incl. the sassy ones: Notice of "One Night Standards" is served, take it or leave it, with no show of conscience or wounds or revenge sex or giving up on love or even brass, just, this is how it's gonna be, and mostly what we won't do, which is mostly not to talk about our pasts or futures or even much of the present, except mebbe "That's all, " or "Move over" (well that will have been for the better-be-immediate future).

So, a lot of bad and some possibly good memories and other possibilities are excluded, *almost* conspicuous by their absence, but her motel room is solid.

Hell, even "Shut Up, Sheila" ("Why don't you and Jesus go take a walk down the hall") is smack-down as brush-off: the hospital room machinery around "my mother's mother" is already loud enough to compete with the family discussion; they don't need any more noise. Secular no-frills values phrased in a way that recalls Hank Jr.'s "We say grace, we say ma'am, if you don't like that, we don't give a damn," although they'd only agree with him about that last part, and even then def. minus his agonized sonic martyrdom. She's putting in just enough effort to spell it out, for somebody who can't take a hint, that's all.

The relatively softer, lighter (gray) "Stone" ("You and me are cut from the same stone," she muses to someone gone) spells a possibility just enough for me to think that her telling said goner that she's "shy like you," but not so it shows, is one reason for her solid-to-heavy vocal tendency, her black hole for the usual country sunshine and moonshine: it's sonic armor.

But solid can be stolid, inert, even, on some tracks---like the less-good works of Tracy Nelson---and her accompaniment should never just rumble along inpassively, cos she can do that. She can sing higher, as on Stone"-- also seems to be overdubbing some self-harmony tracks at times---and on "Velvet Red," where the music does change it up (as happens often enough, really: seems like 7.5 keepers out of 11 songs), into sweet tattoo popgrass: her parents got drunk on Velvet Red and made a baby, so they named her Velvet Red, awww---like The Band Perry looking at family pictures.

Family stuff comes back to life and death in the heavier "Martha Divine," addressed to Daddy's sidepiece: "My Mother is an angel, my father--is not--and some of him's rubbed off on me...How can it be murder, if I bury you alive," and if the 'thoratahs don't agree, "I'll say the devil made me do it." ("Rubbed off, " eh?) And "Voodoo Girl" is slamming toward country metal (couple power ballads here too maybe? But if so, with no mullet nostalgia, believe it or not)

Was thinking she's taking the Gretchen Wilson stance further, though she doesn't claim to be a redneck, and even, in the spoken word intro to "Styrofoam" (which cruises along to an ain't no-big-electronic- groove-thang), she easily reads what she says are her notes re origin of good substance, pronouncing words like "extruded" with no show of effort or achievement, then with a satisfied mind lists many ways you can make use of the sty, would go well with "Red Solo Cup."

Still--the stolid selections, though not that numerous, leave a lingering impression, so far: why I said it it's a grower, not a grabber--overall, I do get into it more than I ever did Girl Going Nowhere, but maybe now I'll go back to that, and look for her indies.

Your Life is a Record seems like a not-even-tryin' trite title at first---oooo, The Soundtrack of Our Lives---and there's Brandy Clark in her big bells, standing by a jukebox , with a Western-type backdrop, and it's twilight time, awww---but she quickly proves her point: especially on headphones, it's a vessel--not a shot glass, or a flute---the instrument, occasionally, but not the glassware---something more spacious, like a goblet, or a tumbler, jar---of some sonic fluid---goes down smoothly, warms and energizes or doesn't lower the level anyway, with some notes, other details I may catch up with on the next round---it's a meta-mechanism, a way to cope, as she gets through the days and nights of what is, despite the attraction to present tense tributes, not even a break-up album, but further down the road---and yet not. You know. "The Past is The Past," here's where that happens, and she's cruising through it, end of the record, back to the beginning.

So she wrangles, traffic manages the insights/momentary summaries and plateaus, slight return of what if I had, what if we were to, coming back after casting aside the scorekeeping: "We loved each other, so---fuck the rest." But still---what if we--nope, so "Can We Be Strangers?" Ehhh, maybe, maybe not, the record keeps turning, and also there's more of the outside inside world, "We're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat", with Randy Newman, sounding better than he has in a long time.

"Pawn Shop" could be a tearjerker, the way she co-wrote it, but not the way she sings it (sounds like she knows that having to go there isn't the worst fate---she's been around)(like a record).

Finally listened  to Expectations, and duh hear even more of what y'all were carrying on about Pruitt than I did via the brief livestream mentioned above, with even more of the same qualities. As with her Rounder labelmate Caroline Spence, there's the sheen, not too slick, of cohesive, flexible small-group sound (wiki lists lots more instruments than I consciously heard: all about the total effect, yet with no sense of blur or poderosa). It's centered, but there's always room for her to wheel around and hit a note over the plate, when that's called for. She (maybe) never goes arena, even in my headphones, though certainly loud enough. There's an increasing sense of (not straining but) striving, traveling the layers of self-and-other-realization, through the releases and tensions of credible relationship realness (best video : "Loving Her, " with Pride Day Parade x one KP, thankful and thoughtful and thinking some more in the backyard, joined then by gf).

So, this is compatible with shelter-in-place sociability, streaming bonding, and with Chely Wright's Lifted Off The Ground, re a new, true, btw gay, country pop mainstream---well, country pop mainstream for Rounder, but that kind of accessibility, anyway.

The grand finale even conjures Golden Age of CMT--not in video, but no need for that: not with audio evocations of slow-dancing couples in cowboy hats, lit by flaming Zippos of appreciation---yes, the good kind of arena---but, it does go on awhile, and I hope she doesn't develop some of Rufus Wainwright's tendency to longwindedness--just bccause they can both hold notes for---quite awhile---doesn't mean they should do it all that often.

(later)Pruitt's voice tends to remind me of Ronstadt's, and this is all new to her, part of her big upfront earnest breakthrough testimonial, still in early chapters----Chely Wright and Waylon Payne are considerably older, and on record the gayness is more allusive, part of the world view in their mood rings---hard to imagine Pruitt getting to that any time soon---will she be more like, say. Taylor Swift for girls who like girls---? 

(later still)(Ronstadt?! wha) Just listened to Pruitt's album againL holy crap, what a *sound.* So many facets, right off---some have associated it w Fleetwood Mac, but here's how to assimilate and *learn* from that (another note to Margo, producer Sturgill), as you're rolling along your own path. Always to a purpose, which is never just a show of strength, though that's part of it, rallying herself as much as anyone, while dealing with the doubts and other shadows, like "How did I get through all that, how am I still getting through it, and yet here I am with you, how did and does that happen---like this!"

So the well-chosen details, incl. still-recent memories, come to the foreground and confirm impressions of the words that found their way through the boom-boom of the first half, and "Normal" sounds forthright, incl. the problematic "If I could be normal, trust me, I would." Not abject, not anything reassuring, either, just how it is in her.

But right now, wow: https://rounderrecords.bandcamp.com/album/expectations

Title opener of Willie Nelson's First Rose of Spring is a withered memory, no bones about it, and too bad if you don't like it, but even some songs that I do like go on too long and slow, starting to wonder if I shouldn't have rated it About Half Good, but I didn't, but quality can lift (or drop)quantity through these categories, and when you crave some more Willie, who else you gonna call? He's always got some fresh turns, like the confluence of maybe Wurlitzer piano, hollow-body eclectic guitar, pedal steel, bass & drums on "Blue Star" and "Our Song," with the latter also eventually suggesting, along w perfect finale "Yesterday When I Was Young," that he has the flair for a whole album of Italian-flavored pop ballads---like "The World We Knew (Over and Over)," "Volare," "That's Amore," "Mambo Italiano," I'm sure Tom Jones, Alex Chilton, Dean Martin LPs could provide a few more, and maybe there will be some on his next Sinatra trib, That's Life. Meanwhile, "I"m Breaking Out Again Tonight," though one that goes on a little too long and slow, is (even in those signs of decrepitude) a nice set-up for "Don't Let The Old Man In," which also provides a great line, "Ask yourself how old you would be/If you didn't know the day you were born." The other fave here is in penultimate truth/ all-the-way-down rollin' surge, "Love Laughed": "It was fun, in a strange kinda way." And the way he speak-sings it, a little trembly but unwavering, is the truth. As always! Good skittery-bones Trigger geetar too.

Waylon Payne was a glorious, one-man-parade Jerry Lee in I Walk The Line---whose Blue Eyes, The Harlot, The Queer, The Pusher & Me colors are saturating as he-they shape-shift(s) into the deeper shades of rippling crisis converging with other familiar elements---more specifically musical, thus  lifewise less scary---into new configurations----okay, there is nothing new under the sun, but this sounds waay subaquatic, swimming through headphones. That's the first half---sounding like one of Edd Hurt's telempath thrift store rescues, from 1969-71---then things are more affirmative, a bright new leaf, when you turn the record over---a little disappointing that way, but the momentum continues and he don't slack. He's happy to be anywhere, and he earns it (not that you should have to, but sometimes is nec. and he does it.) Last track lands, for an evening, at the end of the land, by the Gulf, riding personal history even in a pause,Amazingly vivid in the starlight---read about it and much more in this good interview: https://www.texasmonthly.com/the-culture/waylon-payne-country-music/

Strung out once again on Whitney Rose, while replaying her latest, We Still Go To Rodeos: songs, like the budget-mindful, but not cowed, title track, about getting through this and that, but also sometimes he (not nec. always the same he) drops the ball. On first listen, I thought the guitar might be too much with us, but listening again I got that instruments always respond to her, often writing in short, punchy phrases, although her vocal approach is more float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. Structures seem like she might have been listening to good early Elvis Costello, especially in "Believe Me, Angela"---looks like one of his old titles, doesn't it---but this is strictly woman-to-woman, warning the other one not to take her man, because he sucks. But wait there's more: narrator might be over-eager, overselling "Angela! I like that name." And still more, maybe--this simple male mind will have to lean in.

"Thanks For Tryin'" gets into a building recurrence that somehow reminds me of "Crimson and Clover," while "You'd Blame Me For The Rain" is this album's "Can't Stop Shakin'" Southwestern groove thing, the shrug of a strong shoulder. But there's also room and time enough for real-enough country feel, even a little bitty tear she won't let go, won't let it let her down, can't afford to, she thinks (budget-minded, like she's learned to be).

(PS: Reasonably good audience recordings on YouTube indicate that the guitar volume can be a problem via club sound system, just because she doesn't have the biggest, loudest voice, but I'll take my chances when feasible; meanwhile, maybe she'll livestream, with control over the mixing, or just with her own acoustic guitar, that could work with her songs too).

https://whitneyrose.bandcamp.com/releases

The Night You Wrote That Song: The Songs of Mickey Newbury, by Gretchen Peters: most of the time, when Newbury's words reach an emotional dead end/are misty and bleached out, floatin' on the clothes line one too many times---now he's got me doing it---but most of those times, the music keeps going, unpacking and setting things up on the um consolation medicine shoe truckbed---anyway! Peters and her crew bring out the richer colors and other signs of life in the melodies and rhythms---opener "The Sailor" is restless and murky, sometimes a little too much of the latter, but mostly in good proportions, especially when top-of-game Newbury words emerge, "I never met a stranger/'Til I'd known him for a time." She also lines them up well, so, for instance, when the "She Even Woke Me Up To Say Goodbye" guy. who's been dumped one more time, and know's he'll soon be surrounded by pitying eyes--no merciful murk this morning, fumbles his way to "It's not her heart, it's her mind"--she ain't mean, she just crazy, so forgive her, Lord, he does seem pitiful, sticking that little poison pin in

---but then, he finds his own mind in a paper bag, in thee excellent "Just Dropped in To See What Condition My Condition Was In," annd his unsatisfied mind is. frankly, quite a mixed blessing and bag all through this set: oh he'll show you alright, but his heart, Lord, means so well, so we can all be alone together, taking solace in the sounds (radio-ready, as written).

Desperate times call for desperate measures, so sometimes he even rocks, or this album does, given the material: "Tell Me Why You Been Gobe So Long" could be Jerry Lee, "Leavin' Kentucky" could be Pistol Annies.

And I like the way hopeful little folks of successive decades barely get a chance to set out in the verses, before the choruses of "Heaven Help The Child" come swooping back, look out! So many radio-ready songs make me sick of that money-shot chorus, no matter how good it might be in relative moderation---but this works, it's even the point, I'm pretty sure.

"San Francisco Mabel Joy" works technically, except the tear-jerking twist at the end is one way too many, ack puuuke, but I think that's the only song/track that's entirely indigestible, once you know where it's going (fairly sodden even before that).

Not sure about "Saint Cecelia," since Peters swallows a bunch of words again, but suspect it's just as well.

Damn if "Three Bells for Stephen" doesn't work as finale: Mickey Newbury, in the role of---Stephen Foster, ladies and gentlemem, AKA "Deeear hearts, and gentle peeeople"---yes, it suits him, and he's got the chops to get away with it, at least when Peters and them are channeling Newbury channeling ect.--I think. Check it out maybe.

https://gretchenpeters.bandcamp.com/releases (Seems like all of her albums are here.)

Listening to this year's Pam Tillis, Looking For A Feeling, and every second seems fully inhabited w out crowding, though may have to wrap my brain around her musical philosophical embrace, though p down to earth under the stars and tides, most of it seems building and riding on or near country funk, one way or another, though it's always a given, never a retro novelty, as scenes from earlier life ride the present. Cover is her in the orange shower w Oreo & wine. Thankful , thoughtful, and in bloom, in early 60s or whatevs.(Also, you might dog a 2017 Hon. Mention, Lorrie Morgan & Pam Tillis: Come Lonely and Come Lost And then there's PT's Rhinestoned, Top Ten in '07, as melted down over in these pages that yead: 

Go way into town, but only to where the streetlights haven't been shot out yet, and in the nimbi of yon streetlights, amidst the mists, behold Miz Pam Tillis, with her big, dark green eyes, her long, dark brown hair, her small, calm, brave face (cute not zombie, yet almost totally re-constructed after a wild child car crash at 16, as she'll tell you).On Rhinestoned, her A-list Nashville Cats provide the perfect settings for lush, overcast, ruefully lucid musings, not too chairbound, either: "Life has Sure Changed Us Around" is a chance (?) encounter with John Anderson on the sidewalk, musical traffic going about its business (oh baby), as they get het up and cautiously check each other out, while referring to days and nights when they were much younger, much less responsible (or with much fewer responsibilities). Followed immediately by "Someone Somewhere Tonight," as she suddenly sits up, all too awake, and sees very far in the dark (whoever she's talking to is probably sleeping like a baby on the next pillow, and not like it's a ballad of bravura pathos to wake his ass up, she knows better than to believe in such). But it's my idea of what a pop country hit album should sound like, one idea anyway, although ultimately she's maybe too much the victim; should turn the tables and/or have more ambiguity, ambivalence at times (though there is one where she's mentally explaining to a guy that she's always been the one left behind, and now she doesn't seem that thrilled to find out he's apparently not leaving; doesn't fit her expectations/plans). And there are a lot of good variations on familiar themes, like a waitress telling 'bout how she learned not to trust her car or her heart to a certain someone, certain kind of anyone. Another good should-be-more-popular pop country (with soap opry, somewhut proggy, [but only like the early solo albums of Scott Walker, if he'd stayed in the States] cowboy) album is that by Protest Hill, but don't get me started, just check the link in Top Ten above, to review and song-stream, please! Past the possibilities of that "Band In The Window" Pam's intrigued by, and those "Matches" behind the mirror Protest Hill's looking for (well, in something that opens up like a rusty little medicine cabinet, the kind with old snapshots curled up behind the bottles with the faded-to-invisible prescription labels), the cowboy-slash-farmer finds a nice hallway, where Bobbie Nelson's AudioBiography rolls solo piano every evening down boy, enough, or if not you can check the rest: https://thefreelancementalists.blogspot.com/2008/02/don-allred-country-07-comments-pt.html

(early) Cam's "Nothing Left" seems pretty poignant and sexy to me, low-key and flashy in all the right places, testifying to a relationship that still works. She wants it to go on and on, 'til there's nothing left, sounding like she implicitly recognizes that such a day will come, because death if nothing else. But my first time was with the video, so I'm influenced that way. Here's hoping the album is good.

(much later, in the afternoon) So Cam's album, The Otherside, is finally out; I listened this morning, some tracks a couple of times: half of it got me right away; the rest didn't hold my attention. She always sounded like she'd been there, but sonically sometimes seemed too limited, a little too earnestly tasteful--although I loved that she never ruins by overselling, even on the eternal-flame-ov-namechecked-romeo-and-juliet "Til There's Nothing Left" ("Praying to God please don't save me")(why did I think upthread that this went into something about growing old together? Because press release quoted her re something about this being a song for her husband? Here it's death by orgasm in the teen backseat 4ever).

(That night!)Okay, so she's not really all that restrained in writing, which she does with Lori McKenna on here several times, also Natalie Hemby, in with others, usually, and tonight I get it, the sound and the fury and the sweetness and bitterness and been-there insight, that last most striking in the one that's just by her and Hemby, no other team members needed:

You think you're the girl who doesn't know how to say she's sorry

Doesn't know what to believe, but you wanna believe somebody

You're not the only one, hidin' in the corner of a party

Disappointed with

Who you call a friend.

Well they're gonna give up on you

You're gonna give up on them

And if it's somebody you really love you're gonna find a way to love 'em again

You're gonna have to learn to forgive yourself and not take it so personally

Yeah take it from a girl like me

Take it from a girl who takes things to take the pain away

Can't look in the mirror 'cause there's always someone else to blame

She gives more than she's got, thinks everyone should do the same

It's hard to see

In the middle of a dream

Also, she can get loud, no prob, and sometimes double-tracks her vox with no blur or padding, which can happen for sure.

Covers Sam Smith's "Happier For You," which thematically is like Laura Nyro's "Wedding Bell Blues," also with the same kind of vitality surging around self-torture, as she thanks him for inviting her to the wedding, surprised the bride 'llowed him to: she's all dressed up in black, with nowhere to go but here. Also, Sam's guys work with some of her people on other tracks.

(SS's "Palaces" was one of her breadcrumb singles several years ago, also good, wouldn't mind more---just as long as they don't duet, with Smith crying all over the place, and dragging a choir in there.)

And she's got a Harry Styles co-write with his own team, none of it by Camaron Ochs, but suits her very well (He writes bitter small town country? This is pretty much the afterlife anticlimax of the aformentioned backseat Rome-O and Juli-et.)

TOP COUNTRY REISSUES:

BOOTS NO. 2: THE LOST SONGS is the second release of archival music from the vault of

@gillianwelch

and

@thedaverawlings

. This remarkable 48 song collection will be spread over three volumes. Volume One will be released digitally on 7/31.

Vol.1: 16 tracks, but they slip right through the headphones, beautifully sung and played, former mostly her, latter her and Dave, presumably, anyway can be two or maybe more guitars meshing---in a string of all those scenes, situations, from all those lives, or maybe it's one life, which makes the listening-thinking even eerie-er---find myself going back to listen to subsets before I can get away. Some are glimpses---Pitchfork review* backstory has it that she and he went through many notebooks, pulling out sketches, fragments etc., trying to beat a publishing contract deadline, and be done with that contract--so some of them end abruptly, but folk songs can do that too, and overall I think it works pretty well. And this is only Part 1 of 3.

 *speaking of the Pitchfork review, I think it's otm:https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/gillian-welch-boots-no-2-the-lost-songs-vol-1/

Second reel, songs slipping by, scenes from life, maybe all the same life, getting around---as in Part 1, but now seems like I'm spending more time in each song, though they aren't longer now, don't think, and while there are words, whole verses sometimes that I'll have to come back to, the music always pulls me in and along---maybe it's a bit more intense overall, than Part 1.

Hadn't noticed before any use of recognizable whole melodies---of course the phrasing, of writing and performance, has always fit the classic folk-country-blues nexus, somebody growing up with that on the radio, not the Smithsonian box sets, is the suggestion,using that vibe and tradition for their own personal folk process, even when it's something they can't say out loud---but here "Didn't I" makes personal use of "This Train," and "Fair September" reminds me of "Seven Bridges Road," though it's cooler, even speculative, while roaming in a month of transition, an emotional weather report, as Tom Waits would say: trailing the heat wave, after "You gave me a thirst, no water could quell." Not too fancy, but can imagine a jazz take.

"I Only Cry When You Go" strikes me right off like a classic Willie Nelson ballad, somebody better cover this. She's tough, he thinks she don't need him, which goes with the fear inside "Good Baby" and "Beautiful Boy," where she's scared of lots of things, "most of all the telephone," but also the "moments of romance, giving what can't be repaid"--think that's what she says! Like, giving what isn't really hers to give, this classic love stuff she's learned about, heard about, like everybody does? Think that's right. "Picasso" comes to her door, paints a picture of her she don't like, shows things in her, but she's gonna go "get a hotel" and this longing out of her system, so art can help, maybe.

"Pappa Writes To Johnny": Road song, no whinin' just sayin' (and after all, "Why would you laugh, if you felt like cryin', why would you say it, if sayin' it was lyin'"): okay then, "Dark was the night, cold was the ground, so I got up, and I walked around," but there's a turn-around/possible "meet-up" of a kind at the end that I won't spoil.

"Wella Hella" is the only plugged-in one, I think, but that's okay, pretty much all of these have the juice it seems.

Part 3 will be here by the end of the year, right?

https://gillianwelch.bandcamp.com/album/boots-no-2-the-lost-songs-vol-2

More and more, these seem like the songs of someone who doesn't trust herself to do justice to her feelings, their object and inspiration, private life, public expression--so maybe that's why she left them in the can, unfinished for so long---she did say in an interview or publicity materials that she got disgusted with her writing, just toured as a member of Dave's band for a while---although on the radio tapes I have, her voice in effect sings lead, she can't help it being that distinctive, gotta give it up to her talent after all, and so she has by finishing these things.

At least we're not getting them on a Neil Young/Arthur Russell/Patrick Cowley timescale.

Also, maybe singing them in the persona/POV of the self-mistrustful woman with good secrets, clues, cards, is how she got them finished, even if particulars orig. came from old postcards, snapshots in thrift store books, Netflix, whatever.

 and several if not most of these Vol 2 songs are about frustrations and resources of well-tended, too-well guarded thoughts and feelings, incl. might mess up the other person if you did disclose/share, also yourself if you failed, but also the price of seeming like you don't need him---anyway, it works, backstory in Stone and elsewhere, yeah---- the also fine Boots No. 1, from sessions that first yielded Revival, is also on bandcamp, along with all original releases and that recent quarantine bedsit set of covers:

https://gillianwelch.bandcamp.com/music

Vol. 3 is up today: https://gillianwelch.bandcamp.com/

First listen: first track rides me out of the gate, second straight ahead, number three is stone cold showstopper, throws me into the Kurt Weillian arms of four, five curls me into a delta pallet, but then--well there are several that seem most like vehicles, mainly handy for just the right simple-subtle goosebump performance, yknow that's all it would take, predictable in their way, but handy for sure, and could also imagine buckskin Neil Young bringing out more of the strummy drama of "If I Ain't Goin' To Heaven" and "Peace In The Valley"--but there are also more stone colds crying out to be covered---not strictly necessary, but nice to oblige them by imagining, say,  Willie again on "Strangers Again," him and/or Toby Keith, Eric Church on "The Cowboy Rides Away," and the Everly Brothers must come back for "There's a First Time For Everything" and omg "The Streets of St. Paul."

Bold souls will find a way to the disconcerting, possibly post-gospel "Put Your Foot Upon The Path: "You may live another day, you may never laugh again." (Update: thinking of these songs again while reading Marilynne Robinson's Gilead cycle.)

"One Little Song" seems like the perfect nightcap lullaby send-off for the whole thing, which will (via her site only) be a box set, vinyl + your choice of MP3, WAV, or FLAC---real purty but the CD version is $30.00 cheaper and I don't have a record player. Though of course bandcamp has all the digital options for each vol., no CDs sold sep., however. Plenty of momentum in this set, not that there wasn't in the first two, but maybe a sense of being in the homestretch, that they've gotten used to doing all this, know it's all gonna be alright.

Doc Watson & Gaither Carlton, s/t:

These largely unheard tapes were recorded at Doc Watson’s two earliest concerts, presented in New York City’s Greenwich Village in 1962. Those shows were among the rare appearances Doc’s father-in-law, fiddler Gaither Carlton, made outside of North Carolina. The instrumental pieces, including Gaither’s signature tune “Double File,” include intricate musical interactions developed through years of family music-making. On the songs and ballads, Doc’s instantly recognizable baritone voice is accompanied by his own guitar and Gaither’s fiddle, or by the traditional combination of fiddle and banjo.
https://docwatsonandgaithercarlton.bandcamp.com/album/doc-watson-and-gaither-carlton

The inner warpage of some continuing citizens on K. Waldon's EP (see below) is reminding me of several on Johnny Cash's recent Easy Rider: Best of the Mercury Recordings, incl. some that might be The Man In (or near) The Diner, getting head set for another visit from the New York Times---not all of the material is equally good, but it's all done his way and pulled me right through)(incl. some speedy remakes of Sun-era classics)

Imaginary Categories:

TOP NINE MORE COUNTRY ALBUMS:

Caylee Hammack's If It Wasn't For You is a lot to take in, flying by, but right away, it's obvious that she doesn't need xpost glitzy production of the kind I had in mind: this is is tight, badass country pop, riding with big sister Ashley MacBryde and classmate cousin Kalie Shorr--- wants to know how to get her wings as a phoenix, and she says "shit" a lot, but always to a point: ""'m so tired of the shit I'm talkin', I just wanna be something, mean something," later she "put my plans in a box" to please the man she loved, "but it didn't mean shit, I'm a small town hypocrite," but so is he, and things are outta control, "You said you'd be runnin', runnin', runnin' this town, but you're still runnin', runnin', runnin' around," and now so is she (I think she adds that). Still later, there's a brief solo acid folk lament from the canyon, "Gold," then re-focus, back to the beat, "Spent all that money in the last two weeks, and it don't mean shit": she's "On A New Level of Life," in the sky Lord in the sky, "Champagne on the plane and I don't mind, champagne on the plane and I don't mind." PS: I should have mentioned "Looking for a Lighter," and duet w Reba too. As a Southerner, Ah 'preciate "Preciatcha"---never heard that in a song before, and any such fresh turnings in presumably mainstream-aimed usage or topics are always worth a gold star or two in the Country Vacation Bible School crown. But I may get sick of it, sure, while playing this set quite a bit.

Marshall Chapman, Songs I Can't Live Without---so look at the set list, and think "OK Boomer," even if you are one, but she makes them her own/shows how they are. Not only does she decline "to write my way out" of something or other one more time," she declines to sing some of the high, and some of the low, maybe some of the middle notes too; I don't know, declining so far to do any comparative listening, to the originals or many preceding covers of these well-roasted chestnuts, because it just doesn't seem necessary/does seem like too much work. Never thought of her as having a vocal style, but apparently she does: an expressive near-minimalism (near enough, without losing any of the words), and the musos play just the right notes in the right way, though instrumentation isn't always just the same---a little more Rock on "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?", which she doesn't sing with remembered ingenue-ity, like Carole King, but just as an honest, straight-forward question, kind of startling for a non-ingenue, but so candidly concise that you know she's mature enough to do that, however vulnerable otherwise.

"Don't Be Cruel" has some piano notes, just the right ones of course, and I could almost swear Willie Nelson and Sister Bobbie are backing her on "Tennessee Blues," and JJ Cale must approve of this "After Midnight" even more than Clapton's, despite the difference in royalty checks: you can't take it with you, so it seems.

Was prepared to skip "He's Got The Whole World In His Hands," but it's an effective finale, esp with speaking her mind:"I worry about the people I love. Hell, I even worry about myself!" Elsewhere says she finally got tired of "writing my way out of" (shit).

Lori McKenna, The Balladeer: first listen, enduring impression through all subsequent: very taut, business-like as expected, also "This Town Is A Woman"(she sees you with her eyes closed, like the father son and holy ghost---feel yourself being visualized, raised?!) make me think about me and my town, like on this and others her signing seems live, even a little muffled on certain syllables, but also clear when needs to be (always?) and supported by her own voice multi-tracked or grained, also by other voices at times, but not intrusively, good use of rhythm strumming, piano, bass, drums (esp. When patterns sep on "Two Birds")(didn't catch that the next time)Second listening: album So exciting almost overwhelming momentum for a while, then levels off, but as drawn in to detail by detail and thoughts in response but brought back Last track one empathetic overview but still instructive or instructing Mom song too many? Still got a rueful or minor eye contour like things she can't spill about getting older certainly none of this too Inspirational.

On the Tender Things' How You Make A Fool, something about the vocals  made the distinctive playing seem more patterned than passionate at first, but then it takes hold---my sleeping head started rolling around this record pretty soon---even though the vocals were still awaiting moderation---but then they gained acceptance, at least, and I'm especially amazed by overall effect of "New Mission Bell," which is something like an uncanny homage to the Grateful Dead at their best, ditto Neil Young and Crazy Horse on finale, "When I Get To Berlin." Overall effect of alb is stil more Country than Related. (Vox vs. instruments also a thing w sometymes psych-country Loose Koozies, worth checking on Bandcamp.)

 this is mostly pretty fahn as in fine: https://margoprice.bandcamp.com/album/perfectly-imperfect-at-the-ryman Though I must wanr yall that she does "Proud Mary," and it's the slow-fast "PM": like the Ike & Tina def w/o Ike & Tina. Otherwise, in descending order of complaints, she sometimes extends the ends of lines with bah-bah vibraaato (Shakira does it better), the drinkin' medley seems maybe(?) a tad awkward, like she and the Price Tags needed to rehearse this bit of their old club act maybe(?) a tad more, and some words fall down a well---but the overall momentum and emotional relevance don't. In other words, it's one live album that doesn't seem to have gotten any tweaks, and needed hardly any. (But I'd skip that "Proud Mary" if I were you). Later: this album's combo dynamic seems to go for, anyway honors the memory of Joe Ely Band's Clash Tour-era Live Shots, without being as great, or needing to be (if you can live through such a boldly suggested comparison at all---)

From Rolling Stone Country: Steve Earle & The Dukes will release Ghosts of West Virginia on May 22nd, 2020 via New West Records. The album was produced by Steve Earle and engineered by Ray Kennedy at Jimi Hendrix's legendary Electric Lady Studios in New York City. The 10-song set is Earle's 20th studio album and was mixed entirely in mono, lending a sonic cohesion and punch. In recent years, Earle has experienced partial hearing loss in one ear and can no longer discern the separation that stereo is designed to produce. The recording features his latest incarnation of his backing band The Dukes; Chris Masterson on guitar, Eleanor Whitmore on fiddle & vocals, Ricky Ray Jackson on pedal steel, guitar & dobro, Brad Pemberton on drums & percussion, and Jeff Hill on acoustic & electric bass.

Ghosts of West Virginia centers on the Upper Big Branch coal mine explosion that killed twenty-nine men in that state in 2010, making it one of the worst mining disasters in American history. Investigations revealed hundreds of safety violations, as well as attempts to cover them up, and the mine's owners were forced to pay more than $200 million in criminal liabilities.

Oh yeah, speaking of growers-not-grabbers, I've been getting (not too slowly) into Steve Earle's aforementioned Ghosts of West Virginia more than expected. POV character works hard, plays hard, eventually gets "Black Lung," which he's well aware he wouldn't have if he stayed out of the mine,"but then I wouldn't have nothin." Spends it all, incl. on Saturday night (cue for hillbilly rockabilly "The Fastest Man Alive"), because it won't do him no good "on Judgement Day"(later "under the ground," which he prob means both ways). The balance of electric and acoustic music adds dimension and direction, also balancing his limited voice, which he's learned the hard way not to strain, even when he's calling out the names of dead miners, on "It's About Blood," with the Dukes swelling into a thundercloud that never bursts. The vocal that I can't get out of my head is by Eleanor Whitmore, whose fiddle may have taught her how to sing up and down the walls like that, while her man is gone (she's used to it, but doesn't like it). Wish there were more songs from her point of view, also other non-miners, for instance commenting on what minecentric living does to a community---especially when a lot of natives (even before John Prine's Daddy) got the hell out.

Also, he doesn't go near the Trump-favoring tendencies of some left-behinders---for a bit of that, and other stuff like mountain meth and getting "Knocked up, my-my," see solo albums, esp. debut, of knockee Angaleena Presley.

Three comparatively humdrum tracks out of ten, but they gain by context, especially "The Mine," which is hopeful in a Springsteeny way, which means sing-songy yet empathetically ironic---sure, kid, things'll be all better when you got a job down in there.

Jake Blount's Spider Tales is in the black Appalachian tradition, title referring to a subset of stories in song and vice-versa, w spiders making their way through all kinds of situations. Although it starts with some fairly humdrum instrumentals, and then begs comparison with many good versions of "Where Did You Sleep Last Night"---but, past those first four tracks (which I may warm to, now that I know what's up ahead), "Move Daniel" moves good, with the confluence of his voice and fiddle also striking on "Brown Skin Baby," "The Angels Done Bowed Down, " "Boll Weevil," and the killer finale, "Mad Mamma Blues," a sexy murder ballad, Appalachian swing blues. Instrumentals work better when fiddle-led and fed, with his banjo's percussive support, esp. on "English Chicken," "Rocky Road To Dublin," which is not of black origin I take it, but fits, also "Beyond This Wall," which seems like it might be a modern original or recent trad.-arr. https://jakeblountmusic.bandcamp.com/album/spider-tales

Will prob be more Related than Country when it's time for ballots, but Shelby Lynne's s/t is romantically fixated, maybe self-torturing enough to qualify for real country. Musically, seems like she's absorbed Dusty In Memphis (less the vocals than basic combos, some of the writing and what makes both of those cohesive, regardless of source), maybe Irma Thomas, Bonnie Raitt, Barbara Lewis---but, aside from her own "I Got You," it never comes off as yet more classy sincere retro: everything goes where she needs it to, right now, to stand and express herself---idiomatically, sometimes idiosyncratically, but clearly enough.

(True even when Cynthia Mort's words go riding with Lynne's music, which is about half the time.)

So usually she's thinking out loud/bumping around the bulbs and walls of her head, but she's never mumblecore, can and does project, even before "Here I Am," the showstopper---or so it could be--- but is easily followed by the eeriest track, "The Equation," a surefooted sleepwalker, sleep prowler.

She's cool, or at least keeps the air conditioner on, never complacent---another time, she confesses:

Trapped inside my stories keeps me going/Don't count the days I've been gone/Dark glasses shield me from my intentions/And loneliness/Puts me in my place/Another West Coast sun is going down.

Swamp Dogg's Sorry You Couldn't Make It is a slightly, yet appropriately weirder return of Memphis-Muscle Shoals country soul, like some of the Stax Country collection. I wasn't expecting his proto-alt.r&b milestoneds like Total Destruction To Your Mind, but at first this seemed like mainly for digging the formal pleasures of vintage style, incl. this version of "Don't Take Her (She's All I Got)," which he co-wrote with Gary US Bonds; it was a Johnny Paycheck hit in the early 70s---main prob on these first tracks is mild-mannered vocals, settling down into the ballads for a snooze (although got some lines, like "Good, Better, Best" keeps sounding like "good, better in bed,"which fits the context better, and might grow on me)---then he picks up the tempo with "Family Pain" ( houseful staying together, "smokin' crack and doin' cocaine"), and when he slow it back down for "I Lie Awake," his voice is still awake and then some: this is true country soul, Doggedly climbing Insomnia Mountain in compulsive country self-torture---Otis Redding and George Jones could sing the shit out of it, but Dogg does it fine.

"Memories," featuring John Prine, is where the appropriate weirdness first appears (I think), with Doggtronics swirling around Prine's jaunty heels (as he repeats the chorus again and again, like old folks sometimes do), even distorting his voice towards the end, like memories sometimes do.

"Billy" I'd seen referred to as a tearjerker, but differently interesting than expected: he's got nice musical flowers, but "The neighbors think I'm crazy," so apparently not a normie gravesite? "You should see Billy, he looks just like you, he doesn't remember you, but I guess that's just as well." Like with Opie's Mom? Memories can be too paniful, I reckon--anyway it leaves a few more little such gaps to fill in, not overselling.

Rude retinue of soundz around the edges of "I'd Rather Be Your Used To Be," which is otherwise vintage Willie-style graceful indignation, but maybe louder.

"A Good Song" ("has universal appeal"), then back to riding the swirl with Prine, for "Please Let Me Go Round Again," where they agree that, "I could build a better mousetrap, from a far mo'better plan." "Hey John, could you build a better mousetrap?" "I gotta better mousetrap right here in my mind!" Also wonders if Somebody might put them on a 2-for-1 plan.

HON. MENTIONS/BUBBLING UNDER THE TOP NINETEEN

Ashley Ray, Pauline: Country songwriting pro, on the team w Lori McKenna etc. This 2020 alb is first of hers I've heard: wild 'n' blue munchkin hop on otm uptempo tracks, a bit mumblecore on ballads so far, but that can work when I catch up, like imagery moving out of the murk on some of xpost Gretchen Peters' cosmic country Mickey Newbury trib. Also, at least one of the ballads already works: "Rock and Roll," not Zep's or VU's, but another original, kinda spooky, with two hooks, one in the chorus, the other in a recurring banjo lick.

Clint Black's Out of Sane is totally likable-- Maybe could use some more levels or gimmicks or angles or variety but tight lil combo w the drums and slide gtr and fiddle and steel and he's idealistic at times, pretentious never, straining never, maybe still kinda gullible but learned to be cautious too, trying to balance---still among the hopefuls, as he goes out once again in a minor key, to "Find Myself": "If I get back before I return, do me a favor and keep me there," sounds like he's not kidding. He may joke but never kids, one of those guys. There's sometimes a little bit of honky-tonk-ish piano, some liquidy electric keys too---and backup female vocals just a little bit on one track, could use a little more of that, or guest duet, but still it's pretty good.

Yeah, think the TTs provide little musical jolts in there, while listening to the whole Ohora at once is maybe too snoozy sometimes, despite effective individual tracks, several of which could be good singles. But I'll keep listening. Do especially like the closer, "Time Won't Take Its Time With Me," which ticks along like a Don Williams song, slipping in some well-aware candor, on his way to wherever. The Merle vibe goes good with this too, and the yodel at the end---I like that he doesn't sound bother to sound *so* much like Merle, doesn't depend on that, unlike---well you can think of several examples.

That  Wynonna covers EP is up now, my fave is "Ramble On Rose"---would like to hear her do an alb of Dead, or at least "Ripple" and "New Speedway Boogie," both of which would fit rat in here:https://wynonna.bandcamp.com/album/recollections

Recollections, the captivating new EP from Wynonna, marks both a literal and a figurative homecoming for the GRAMMY-winning songstress who recorded much of the collection while quarantining on her Tennessee farm in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Forced off the road for the first time in years, she found herself reconnecting with her roots as she sang once again for the sheer joy of it, performing a series of loose and lively covers with her husband, former Highway 101 drummer, multi-instrumentalist and producer Cactus Moser.

The gritty "King Bee," a half-century-old blues tune Wynonna and Moser have been performing live together for years, gets an extra boost of swagger from the couple's palpable chemistry, with Wynonna bouncing swampy, distorted harmonica riffs off of her husband's searing slide guitar. " 'King Bee' reminds me of why I love the blues so much," Wynonna said.

"I've learned a lot being at home these last few months," Wynonna reflects. "When there's no touring, no concerts, no band, no lights, no action, all that's left is you and the song. All that's left is your gift."

'Recollections' EP

1. I Hear You Knocking (Fats Domino)

2. King Bee (Slim Harpo)

3. Feeling Good (Nina Simone)

4. Angel From Montgomery (John Prine)

5. Ramble On Rose (Grateful Dead)

(Thought I'd written more abou RIP Billy Joe Shaver, but all I can find is this Nashville Scene ballot comment [this was one of my Top Five Reissues of 2013]

Shaver's Jewels is a family affair, and though blood is still thicker than mud, good thing late son Eddy's electric slide 'n' pick times paw Billy Joe's honky-pop sense can shear and veer through the druggy detour that will claim the younger (they sing about it, with BJ busting the woman who took E. one shot over the line), and the equally inertial tendencies of relatively ex-desperado old dude's righteously flashlit path. Does not preclude or anomalize a finger-salute to Amarillo, or the immortal "I been to Georgia on a fast train honey, I wasn't born no yesterday/I got a good Christian raisin' and a Eighth Grade eddjycation and I ain't gon'/Be treated thisaway.")

About Half Good:

Carly Pearce s/t https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9tY0BWXOZFu8ZY8vzSk-ELel28wgniqa   About Half Good in effect, whatever the actual count? Or Less Than----longass album, one thing listen more when duet partner shows up, could use more of these or back-up singers, as w Clint, but needs em more she can sing, but gets kinda bland, more a matter of gravitas or involving texture than agility, also songs just vehicles,not enough for her, says its her story, but just seems like up, down, most of the ups generic pop, downs better cause more country? Also kinda generic but hitting right beats for bruises, she gets closer to soulful sometimes? The banjos in middle layers give some percussive fingerpick rolls, bit more harmonic inner surfaces also dobro, steel back in there, as on prev Like the echo and maybe phasing on finale, more of that please.

Less Than Half Good:

https://margoprice.bandcamp.com/ Rumors: AKA That/s How Fleetwood Mac Gets Restarted? Not so many Mac per se, to be fair, but goes w overall musical tendencies So far liking not loving 4-10, sweet vintage or retro upholstery w horsepower and framing incl contrast w and timely enhancements of the high clear voice, Hon Mention? HR Related? Despite retro rock long since part of mainstream country pop and alt-->America, not as distinctive as for inst new Lucinda, but this may grow on me some more(see later in here, it hasn't), Track 2 gets points for including outside world, you're letting *everybody* down, thanks for the mention strong fourth quarter 4, 8, 10 esp appealing (8. even kinda Lennosque re piano ballad w freakouts) 10 maybe Eurovision Diddly tho? Some better on YouTube? Na. "I'd Die For You" for Singles tho, even more than "What Happened to Our Love?" "Prisoner of the Highway" testimonial churchy anthem, Loretta w Black-sounding choir, but also some Loretta-style frankness, thus LL trad and life's other side or in close for details, but since getting so candid, what who makes her (such a righteous-sounding) Prisoner? That rockin upbringing in "Twinkle Twinkle" a clue? Soldiering on down the party highway working hard playing hard like primo Nugent said? But so righteous gotta ask kinda ironically righteous since its a confessional or she the honky tonk angel w dirty face- Ashley MacB more credible as highway badass and soldier, got more to say beyond stylization reaffirmation (no "All American made" this time)---overall effect still About Half Good Whatever The Count, cause tendency to clunkiness, even drab in ornate way at tymes. Gets worse the more I listen. Effective use of Lennonesque piano ballad tension w sudden electronic vocal swoop swipe on a couple of tracks, more effective if just did it once.

Hailey Whitters, The Dream: Unless Musgraves is increasingly your go-to guru, and/or The Golden Hour is your touchstone or wellspring or Sgt. Pepper's, I'd say not to waste time with most of this---although "Red White & Blue" is a keeper: here she actually seems to push back against her chronic sluggishness, in a way I don't think I've ever heard (that wordless, rec cry is not a hook in the usual sense, but keeps me waiting for its return), and "Dream, Girl" is a little sneaky, and "The Devil Always Made Me Think Twice" has that stalkin', smokin' beat and riff, the kind of thing she needs way more of---or a sax solo, steel guitar, hick-hop beats--anything to distract from the drab vocals, trite tunes, triter advice, that the people who might possibly benefit from are not likely to hear, because not enough sweetening for the pill to go viral---also, does she really listen to herself? "Happy people don't cheat"? Well, maybe if the cheatee has already made them happy and ready to take things further---but then, also, just to touch all the bases, "do whatever makes you happy"---so that includes, I dunno, cheating, mass murder, shoplifting, gtfo  Some say RIYL: Maren Morris, Miranda Lambert, Lori McKenna, Brandy Clark, etc I do, but this don't. Sorry yall, it's just hitting me rong (been listening all afternoon, per your recs) f you really like recent Musgraves and that side of McKenna's writing, Whitters is okay, although we agree on the thinness of her voice, the need for more production solutions.

Kelsea Ballerini, Kelsea: good well-meaning ideas for songs, or at least topics, but not v developed that much, lyrically or musically, for the most part, although opener “Overshare” spills over some, one about who is the other girl, me or you (or somebody else, think she wonders at one point) w Halsey, could be good if more projected, one where she drinkin and thinkin, can’t resist writing a song (is she recording or calling, does she know) “Ignore me,” I’ve had too much tequila or it’s the tequila talking, mostly wry me, though “Love Me Like A Girl,” so he wouldn’t know when a girl wants just to be held, with no attempts to fix things, although she does appreciate his man hands etc, yeah that’s good, but like most of this kind of making sure she’s not too loud, also not too forthcoming about just why she doesn’t want to go to the club, other than doesn’t wanta see other people trying to hook up, saying anything, also doesn’t wanta wake up on the bathroom floor with a stamp on her hand like a tattoo, well okay that says a fair amount, but not about her own behavior, as in one that’s all about alcohol, it’s not that kind of country actually it’s not country but aimed at the audience that presumably appreciates lack of untoward revelations and gory details, at least from her if post this add bandcamp link MAYBE PLAY LOUDER, sems like some samey-ness to tunes, tempi, also no sonic candy bombplay etc

(From Bandcamp Daily, re: African country music (no 2020 releases yet)

Cowboys hit the African continent in the late '20s, before country music itself did. Around southern Africa, in colonial mining camps, companies arranged screenings of silent (and heavily edited) American westerns "to entice potential laborers, serving as an inexpensive distraction from the brutal working conditions and the allure of potentially toxic home-brewed alcohol," according to Gordon Ashworth's liner notes to Olvido Records' wondrous recent collection, Bulawayo Blue Yodel. After the movies came the new and dangerous local archetype of the "Copperbelt Cowboy," local men emulating on-screen behavior. And alongside that came popular, imported 78s by early American country star Jimmie Rodgers, the Mississippi-born singing brakeman and iconic yodeler. https://daily.bandcamp.com/lists/african-country-music-list See also: https://olvidorecords.bandcamp.com/)

RELATED TOP ELEVEN:

Lucinda Williams! some of these mannered rock ballads suggest scarred Van Morrison her manners w phrasing can be incisive around or move around under my skin def paring down words to where sounds are part of the writing duh and guitar etc builds detail, voice too, while sometimes recalling extending early Pretenders and blues Dylan, kind of blues he might lead you to)(also guitarist/violinist knows his Wray, his Billy F., his Reed-Quine probably, in terms of more about tone-texture sometimes---Irish Times (?) reviewer mentioned in wiki as saying lots of songs at same tempo, and I'd say some could be shaved, like last minute or xx seconds, maybe try that on vlc, but overall momentum carries these tracks, strong fourth quarter esp Later: she even seems to invent Arena Americana on here, when they get to drum sticks click 2-sec intro and get their wah-wahs out. She sounds totally weary at one point, over and over, while letting the music carry the marvelous "Life's A Gas"(I hope it's gonna last") refill bubble on RIP Hal Willner's swan song comp AngelHeaded Hipsters: The Songs of Marc Bolan and T.Rex.

(for more on that: https://thefreelancementalists.blogspot.com/2021/01/lifes-gas-uproxx-ballot-lucky-nineteen.html )

Jason Isbell, Reunions:

Under pressure of atmosphere, memories, incl. of present and future, spooky and urgent----music more varied after "Running With Our Eyes Closed," calmer but still insidious, words finding their way in---"St. Peter's Autograph,", hmmm--but I get some of 'em right away, esp the one about sober life incl. dreams about drinking, a couple nights a week now, like, "I had one glass of wine, woke up feelin' fine,and that's how I knew it was a dream," but some are rougher, like the even realer-seeming dream of calling in sick to treat yourself down town--you deserve it, self, you been real good for so long---"It gets easier, but never easy, " why have I never heard a song about this must-be-fairly-common experience before? So far, Reunions seems like one of his most sustained achievements in quite a while:

https://jasonisbell.bandcamp.com/album/reunions

Richard Thompson, Bloody Noses---6 songs on bandcamp:

This is an all-acoustic EP recorded at home during lockdown.

All instruments played by Richard Thompson, some harmony vocals by Zara Phillips.

"All acoustic" seems to incl. some deft use of pick-ups, something in the recording set-up allowing for some effects I associate more with per se electric guitar on strong closer "What's Up With You?", in which some of the guitars get percussive as hell, also one of 'em's tuning helps, and sounds like might be actual drums on "The Fortress," with Zara Phillips chiming in effectively on the chorus, "You had the whole world, wrapped around your fin-gah,"(hook stuck in my head) also good on "Survivor."

Fave so far is "She's A Hard Girl To Know," which I had trouble following at first: so many details, scenes in his head, as he creeps through the rooms, putting it all together, maybe. She's still keeping him going, he knows that much.

Tunes are good, and it's all RT as hell, no surprises, but not just killing time either.

Must check some of the other stuff on here as well:

https://richardthompson.bandcamp.com/

In the middle of this our life, Maria McKee comes to a clearing and plunges fearlessly into thickets of imagery, following her Beatrice not into Afterworlds, so much as La Vita Nuova---she to whom the term "Pre-Raphaelite" has long been among the many applied, from time to time, so you can also call some of these blossoms Pre-R glam or art folk rock, though sometimes it's just her tirelessly faithful piano, maybe with upright bass, or poised orchestral sojourns, and her voice is in great shape for answering all calls and seeking more. Almost as exhausting as it is astonishing to listen to all the way through with no bathroom breaks, nevertheless it always pulls me right around the rim ov void, along the path of Passion. While she sings and plays and conducts it, I'm a believer, pert near---no tyme nor space to think otherwise, in my case.

Nancy McCallion's Go To Ground seems somber at first, in acknowledged quarantine, but then slyly rallies, slipping in and around the pewter and tin details, towards that old Mollys magic, especially if you mix it with Minute2Minute's Travelers, Transients, & Tourists, with former Mollys-co-instigator Catherine Zavala veering once again into the winter Western desert gardens of olde Nueva Mexico (incl. Tucson homebase of her and McC's crews, as always), now with Turkish flavors at times, also or including a klezmer disko tune---for more on the Irish-Chicana-driven Mollys, "mixed-button Accordion Americans, " as I called them long ago on this blog, see https://thefreelancementalists.blogspot.com/2004/03/even-more-guest-mentalism-from-don.html  For a good previous McCallion solo album, see https://thefreelancementalists.blogspot.com/2011/01/hand-down-your-head-tom-doobie-main.html  And here's my monster Mollys helping for the Voice, which packed the venue for their NYC debut, according to another Molly's road diary---may need to tweak this archived original, but give you the idea about many tracks: https://myvil.blogspot.com/2005/12/clockwork-pinata.html

Randall Bramblett fortified the strongest Cowboy* line-up I know of---on several of their own albums and The Gregg Allman Tour: all reissued, sometimes expanded, in recent years---and he’s been a good solo artist since the 70s. The all-new Pine Needle Fire succinctly suggests tight early Steely Dan with a Southern accent---but the nimble multi-instrumentalist and session leader is just sitting and thinking and singing behind his piano, through many, many a sad, sometimes beautiful post-break-up ballad all throughout the 10th Anniversary Edition of In The Meantime, which may also be expanded---too much of a good thing, or maybe I’m just too much of a bad thing to keep my mind from wandering---some keepers though, for sure. Lots more albums besides these on his bandcamp.

*As I said about Cowboy in the 2018 Scene round-up:

We had one chance to get it right. And this film is a document of the twists and turns in the road that brought us to that one-night-only sold-out performance at the Great American Music Hall (Itself a former bordello and a deco SF institution).

The songs performed that night include characters like Willie Mays, martyred supervisor Harvey Milk, Cain & Abel porn kings Jim & Artie Mitchell, mythic oddball "Red Man," preacher/Svengali Jim Jones, politician-turned assassin Dan White, and Emperor Norton...[ yeah, the film's on youtube, I think---but this is enough for me. Most of the songs seem too soft---sentimental and soft on Chuck, over- and underworked, with lots of detailed imagery and Deep turns of phrase that go nowhere much, even when some of the historical "references" are explained in his bandcamp comments. Although the one from POV of Emperor Norton kind of works,in a John Calean way, and "I Felt Like Jesus" is def. Chuck, also Caleian, but here not impending doom so much as the catchy concise pop goes the violets of vio-oh-lence-mode of Chuck and Cale.

Maybe a couple of other exceptions, but overall if you liked the songs already, you'll prob like them even better with these strings, and even if you don't like 'em, strings still help, so mission accomplished either way.

https://chuckprophet.bandcamp.com/album/strings-in-the-temple-live-with-orchestra-at-the-great-american-music-hall

The latest 2020 release is all-new The Land That Time Forgot, and the sound is more mild-mannered than expected for post-Temple presentations---I was expecting something more like 2017's Bobby Fuller Died For Your Sins, talked about upthread and still on bandcamp---but, given that, most of it works better than Temple. even in perhaps delib contrast w rock references---this would make a nice single, kind of like Randy Newman with a better voice:

If Bukowski was good looking

And Napoleon was tall

If Joan of Arc just took her meds

She'd be a movie star

If up was down and down was up

Imagine where we'd be

The New York Dolls would still be here

And music would be free

And I'd be high

As high as Johnny Thunders

In the land that time forgot

High as Johnny Thunders

...And if families stayed together

I'd have a window seat

And all the children of the world

Would have enough to eat

If heartbreak was a virtue

Man, I'd be so virtuous

To get back in your pants

I might hijack a city bus

And I'd be high...

Ditto the lonesome kids who "cranked Metallica" and partied:

Nilli said, "I had a body once

Willie, you have no idea

I could make a grown man bark all night

Anytime, anywhere"

Willie said, "I had a lion's mane,

Now I sing at the top of my lungs

Till the neighbors get the broomsticks out

And the cops all sing along"

They'd be singing

Love me like I wanna be loved

"Paying My Respects To The Train" could be a bonus track for Buffalo Springfield's Last Time Around, and "Nixonland" has a suitably ominous vibe, though no Neilian guitar waves, still:Just last night I fantasized I was in a time machine

Walking hand in hand with my sister there

Along the San Clemente beach

My fourth grade class took a field trip once

To pay tribute to the man

Did I ever tell you that I was born

We've got no obligations in the heart of Nixonland?

But then it gets to some bits of Nixoncana which you might find familiar, maybe from Rick Pearlstein's book---eventually another glimpse from the narrator's own early takes, maybe:

He had a wife and two daughters too

They were with him right up until the end

Holed up like four refugees

High on a cliff over NixonlandMake up your own Neil solos!

"Meet Me At The Roundabout" is kind of early Springsteen turning into Alex Chilton, when it gets to this part:

You took me to a Catholic priest

And I took you to a whore

You took the breath right out of me

Against your kitchen door

No one to impress

Go on and ask me anything

The answer will be yes

"Womankind" seems Bruce Randy Chilton as hell:

Man made that, man made this

He made the blow-up doll

He made the iron fist

But he didn't make the wind

And he didn't make the rain

Or the cold sunshine

On a winter's day

Meet me down by the powerlines...

Man made this, and man made that

He made the parking lot

He made the pork pie hat

But you carried a child

And you taught it to live

While they short you every hour

For the time you put in

Meet me down by the powerlines

---and a crucial verse in "Waving Goodbye" also seems Chiltonesque in some ways. Still others---well anyway, it won me over, for the most part:

https://chuckprophet.bandcamp.com/album/the-land-that-time-forgot

Even better, as orig. noted on this blog: I finally got around to Chuck Prophet's 2017 Bobby Fuller Died For Your Sins. He's checking in, noting that '16 was a bad year for rock 'n' roll deathwise, right from the beginning, but him and the boys carried on; later, only actually kinda slow and blue one has them finding an offnight situation, the moneyman's iffy, the doorman's insistent, "the bartender's out in the middle of the street with his pants around his neck....but we got up played and sang and tried to make it rain." Sounds moderately satisfied, although Prophet's not saying he follows the Lord's Example in "Jesus Was A Social Drinker, " but he can appreciate it, so "C'mon, wash me in the water, and I'll wash you."

Mostly it's stomp and jangle, a little bit of Radio Shack "vintage" synth, most noticable, though still blending in, on the deadication to Alan Vega, doin' it with one foot on the altar, one foot on the grave (lively, though maybe a little too long).

Also like the one where he recalls how him and his lost brother used to dress up like astronauts to trick-or-treat--this right before he explains again that all the sweet things he means to tell you are "Coming Out In Code."

He's been watching the news, he knows about the guy who's a jangle-stomping "Killing Machine," having walked into a store and bought a gun, no prob, and there's store girl, takin' a smoke break---also the real life case of "Alex Nieto," shot dead by cops: they thought the taser, which he wore for his job and pointed at them during a confused argument, was a gun. Should they have handled it quite like that uh-well-ah

Fave so far is the one where he dreams about being Connie Britton, brushing her hair everyday, and driving her pink Caddy "up above the clouds, 'til the Trumpets sound, and then I might come down." Bunch of others too, I don't like 'em all, but they're all here:

https://chuckprophet.bandcamp.com/album/bobby-fuller-died-for-your-sins-2

From Tompkins Square Records: Echoes of Neil Young's Crazy Horse and guitarist ‪Marc Ribot‬ continue into Miller's new album, Dave Miller, though he has expanded his focus to now include detailed arrangements and more refined production techniques...Miller's music has become even more alive and exploratory. Beautiful mellotrons collide with fuzzed out guitars over swampy drums and non-ironic bongos, as if ‪Brian Wilson‬ got into a bar fight with The Meters and ‪Link Wray‬ before realizing they were kindred spirits, with Miller composing the score. Miller's music, above all, aims to create its own utopic universe where all the cool music coexists.

Well, first listen does not bring Brian to mind--Neil maybe implicitly, in some of the surprise turns of the first 12 minutes, first three tracks---no Crazy Horse cave stomp, maybe cave art--but the rest of that, incl Ribot's more acerbic hipster jazz turns, in there w Neilian jolts---yeah, and there are at least three tracks, past the first three, that immediately summon Link Wray's speculations, and yeah, picking up the Meters in mid-70s NOLA, heading toward yon high plains truck stop after midnight--but not quite, because the drumming, bongos or whatever, is simpler/stricter than Z. Modeliste's with the actual Meters---most of it is stricter than that, also than the first 13 minutes, although most music is, and "simpler" prob isn't quite the word: more a matter of nerve and focus on just. these. notes, played just so, w/o getting anal about it.

(First 12 minutes might be called "flowery," in sense of tunneling through flowerbeds, coming up and going back in.)

He prob also likes Shuggie Otis, Santo & Johnny, the band Man, Rainbow Bridge---but I'm not enough of a liftologist to spot any lifts. in the spirit, but never the letter, of the Sunwatchers too. O Vintage Youth!

(I may live to regret such effusions (of mine as well as theirs), but for now, what the hell.) 40 minutes, 30 seconds, calm and eventful.

Drive-By Truckers:  Lots of social commentary, incl. field reports or simulation of same, and editorializing, as expected---but most of the music pulled me into the whole news-bluesoid alt americana rock experience immediately---and *back* in when distraction of screen beckoned---awright :https://drivebytruckers.bandcamp.com/album/the-unraveling

(later)So I still like The Unraveling, tho heard the highly-acclaimed American Band as clumsy with the political comments---trouble getting to fresh expression, esp in songshapes that lure---go back to Woody G, DBT: he always found a good tune somewhere, still got that P Domain for public discourse---anybody listened to all/any of these live sets? They've been pretty good live in my experience, even w material I didn't care for as studio tracks, but where should I start w all this?

https://drivebytruckers.bandcamp.com/music

Alabama Ass Whuppin' is a real good sweatbox set of prime early material, from when they still had a sense of humor.

This the official reissue of the bands long 'out of print' live album from 2000, ALABAMA ASS WHUPPIN'. Recorded in various Georgia clubs during the Pizza Deliverance Tour of 1999, it is probably the most punk rock thing they have ever done. ATO Records & Drive-By Truckers have restored the original 1/2' analogue mixes of the album which have been re-mastered with some beautiful new art work

I do agree that The Unraveling did a better job of being topical and political than the overt American Band did. That said, I don't think the band has lost their sense of humor so much as not having a whole lot to be happy about at the moment.

― soaring skrrrtpeggios (jon /via/ chi 2.0), 

That's what came across on AAW! Their humor didn't depend on happy stuff: This food tastes the way Ah feel...She's the best-dressed gurl in Butt-holevilllle. Ditto on Southern Rock Opera and Pizza Deliverance (still need to check Gangstabilly. "Go-Go Boots" is a good later example, with that creepy Sardonicus groove. Based on a true/testified to story, let the record show.

On The New OK, "The KKK Took My Baby" away is good jolty closer, turning up the volume after sleepless swirl of "Watching The Orange Clouds," and I like the processing of Cooley's voice here and elsewhere, although his trademark corrugating crooning fills in pretty well for Shonna Tucker's touching tones, which I immediately started jonesing when the Spoonereque piano intro of "Sarah's Flame" commenced. Also like the way all his words roll with the keys, and baritone voice that occasionally shows up after he mentions "Barry's baritone." That one and the near beach music of "Sea Island Lonely," with soul horns grooving by sometimes, and "The Distance"---tracks 5., 6., 7.---will or would def. make it to my personal mixtape of DBT through the years. Also liking several more, although the big shoe stomp can still plod at times (drummer's doing what they want, or he'd probably be gone, like several longtime companions over the years).https://drivebytruckers.bandcamp.com/album/the-new-ok Also "Tough To Let Go" : "Know that the weight of your expectations won't fit in the door."

Good interview w Hood, posted Oct. 23:

https://www.al.com/life/2020/10/patterson-hood-talks-new-drive-by-truckers-album-eddie-van-halen-jason-isbell.html Also: writing projects to keep from going crayzee, Petty as punk etc.

@ShonnaTucker

Shout out to the elderly lady up the road today wearin

a sleeveless pearl snap collared shirt workin a leaf blower

with one hand and a Coors light in the other. I 100% get it.

P. Hood, "I Know A Place---Growing Up Muscle Shoals":

https://www.oxfordamerican.org/magazine/item/1987-i-know-a-place

And his accompanying playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5AzVQ0Be9NoAaM3xXPQF9O?si=CBstknviRDaelqqKclAJkg

Also: https://www.thelineofbestfit.com/features/interviews/drive-by-truckers-patterson-hood-nine-favourite-songs

Lydia Loveless, this time with a MacBryde Effect grower-to-grabber (LL's first to take more than a couple of listens): Daughter 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 morWords 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.

(later) 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.

(Butt of course)okay now I do get it, & 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 catharsis" 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.

Before I forget, the  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&

(*(also a sep listing for soundtrack)

RELATED HON. MENTIONS/BUBBLING UNDER THE TOP ELEVEN:

Becky Warren's The Sick Season is even more pungent than usual*, making Roseanne like a flowery flower pot, also truthfully titled: covid and "Whatta ya got?" as Brando says (when asked what he's rebelling against) in The Wild One. Docked a notch for being a tad too real, sick-wise (ewew). But, keeping up musical standards---Preachiachya. So much so, let's hit the *links:

Becky Warren's War Surplus Deluxe

---2017 reissue of the 2016 original, worth getting for the bonus tracks

---is a song cycle about life, lives, in a 

Southern-sounding military town. 

2018's Undesirable is less fluid, less-back-and-forth,

 seemingly less concerned with verbal particulars, 

more about sonic particulates in the gritty atmosphere 

(although WSD has plenty of those).

 Here she just cranks up the rhythm guitar and drives

 on through the smog, keeping an eye on everything, of course

---while the previous album was where I'd hoped Isbell 

might reach, considering the highlights of his DBT 

contributions and debut album (where he was backed by

 the Truckers, come to think of it), 

this is more like if they backed her

---possibly with some DBT co-writes

---but she doesn't need any of that. Although Truckers,

 Stones, maybe Petty and the Heartbreakers are 

influences, she's got her own voice, 

and I think of this as rocking country 

(the kind with lots of living, dying and killing

 time in the rear-view, watching for lots more ahead).

Oh yeah, she does have some stand-out tracks, 

writing-wise, especially "Sunshine State," where she's

 calling to say she's out of prison, ain't mad at ya, 

just checking in, be good now, bye-bye. https://beckywarren.bandcamp.com/music

(Last year I quote-bombed from my prev. Kelsey Waldon coverage, will refrain below, but look it up)(hint: https://thefreelancementalists.blogspot.com/2020/02/old-sole-gold-love-emily-d-freak-in.html)

Whoah---just now played Kelsey Waldon's covers EP, They'll Never Keep Us Down, which is not one of your covid-alibi barebones potboilers: it's well-produced, swirling around and further shading, supporting her deftly deployed Appalachian inflections---and dig this track list:1.

1.The Law Is For Protection Of The People 04:33

2.Ohio 04:01

3. Mississippi Goddam 04:54

4. Sam Stone 04:29

5. They'll Never Keep Us Down 02:51

6. With God On Our Side 07:30

7. I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free 03:11

So the righteous weary narrator of "The Laws" is too close to home, ditto Kent State and the whole of MS, where now I'm especially struck by how this "hillbilly"-tagged Kentucky woman audibly relates to

Yes you lied to me all these years

You told me to wash and clean my ears

And talk real fine just like a lady

Also Dylan's entrophic balladeer setting out on a new day's slog:

Oh my name it ain't nothin'

My age it means less

The country I come from

Is called the Midwest

7:30 minutes of that, no more or less relentless than the razor detail of "Sam Stone," remembered, as a matter of fact, by the local junkie's offspring, with a brittle briskness more effective than the relative weepiness of Prine's original track---would like to see her do more by him, for sure.

Ends with the atypically upbeat "I Wish..." providing some refreshment, but not letting nobody off the hook: https://kelseywaldon.bandcamp.com/ (As on some earlier recordings, execution not always quite up to distinctively putting across the always discernable sense of conviction; understatement for sake of realness is tricky.)

Orkesta Mendoza/Carrie Rodriguez: iAmericano!: The Musical

 Original Cast Recordings are mostly not my thing---but I still mean to check The Hamilton Mixtape , and do like sit-down 'Tube segs of CR singing and violining songs from the show, with acoustic guitar as her only other accompaniment---oh, the Orkesta is ready for anything, and other lead vocalists also put across the mix of anticipation, apprehension, aspiration, and realism, in the POV of young Dreamers and others hoping and reaching for more security and room to move, citizenship  as launching pad, or something else solid under their feet. Just something about the studio presentation is is a little too formal for this ol' Anglo barefoot-in-the-rockhead, man. Maybe if I saw it live? In the Aftertimes.

Good'uns Added After Ballot Deadline/Subjects For Further Study:

S. G. Goodman: Old Time Feeling---Appalachoid high lonesome--associated pitch and power rising bullseye from the persistent and fully occupied folds of fog-smog topography: like The Croz before him, on Joni Mitcherll's debut, Goodman's co-producer Jim James refrains from loading this launch with heavy big-name guests---just close mics That Voice and jumps back. Oh, it gets a bit of echo sometimes, and the swirl of low-reflective resonance also brushes by reverb-y guitar (which can come apart sideways when appropriate), pedal steel, bass, drums (she told Rolling Stone she was inspired by Link Wray's '71 s/t, one of his chicken coop sets)---but mainly That Voice, which is youthful but also one of experience, like debut Joni, with plenty to remember and offload, seeking some relief, but not miserabilist nor wrecking ball, just personalised fragments, scenes, phrases coming toward the brink of clarity---somewhat like early Neko on Bloodshot, when she was covering and writing between Loretta Lynn and Scott Walker. Could imagine Goodman working with Brandi Carlile, the Highwomen, whomever, though for now is still Murray KY collegetown-based apparently. (Before this solo, worked as The Savage Radley with a collaborator who was also a drummer; she's gotta have a drummer, as do my ears)

H. C. McEntire: Eno Axis----title refers to North Carolina's Eno River, though the Brian is also apt: as w Goodman, there's a psych-country quality, here more horizontally spacious, a luminescent river plain, with those little changes all along that river boat pilots factor in---it's earthy and fluid, watchful and ruminating and confident, like a bit more propulsive Cowboy Junkies effect, gathering around a strong voice with a lot to say, which will also take a while to sink in, but appealing sound right off, and she doesn't keep her players on too short a leash/does know when to shut up, always preacheated. https://hcmcentire.bandcamp.com/album/eno-axis

RaeLynn: Baywater EP---Party already started, pop goes the country in the middle of sumpin-sumpin "drinkin' with the guys, dancin' with the girls"--- which we can call sis-step (with no bro oversell, though helps that this an EP*)---but it's not like she takes the gift of givenness for granted: "Chasin' down their dreams….there must be some real girls hangin' around/This Fake Girl Town." Sounds a bit haunted. Also, if you were to ask "Me About Me," she'll tell you what she had to reach through to Choose Life---the good life, that is, and "Judgin' To Jesus" is what she'll leave. I better shut up, too many hook song titles, like "Bra Off," which is another story.

*Sis like Bro seems more effective at single or EP-length, almost always. Not that she's incapable of a good LP in a somewhut different vane. Let's see, what did I say around these parts in 2017: RaeLynn's Wildheart: she was shutdown in The Voice prelims, but that was 2012, and she's the across-the-diner-table, lower case but never drab voice of experience now, nothing ponderous, just the light-enough blues and beauty of the world as reflected in flexing rootstronic-tending aerial shades: it's morning in America one more time, whether or not you've been to bed yet.

Joe Ely, Love In The Midst of Mayhem: Seems merely earnest and worn wearing at first, vocally and rhyme-wise vocalizing and rhyming but  though uses just a few instruments at first, or initially spare accompaniment strikes notes responses setting strike notes that take hold pretty soon, and increasingly so, in more filled-out, varied arrangements where every detail still counts, more electric than I’d expected---getting so into the music to keep from going nuts with “all this time on my hands” that he mentions in Amazon editorial listen again, Hon Mention or what?

(I think Americana should mainly be what you make of it, from what you're looking for and what you come across, in any event. As with true cratedigger and trashdiver Harry Smith putting together The Smithsonian Anthology of American Folk Music, or more likely, something like this:

Some Saturday nights there were barn dances, way out in Elgin or Sonoita. In barns. Everybody from miles and miles would go, old people, young people, babies, dogs. Guests from dude ranches. All of the women brought things to eat. Fried chicken and potato salad, cakes and pies and punch. The men would go out in bunches and hang around their pickups, drinking. Some women too, my mother always did. High school kids got drunk and threw up, got caught necking. Old ladies danced with each other and children. Everybody danced.
Two-step mostly, but some slow dances and jitterbug. Some square dances and Mexican dances like La Varsoviana. In English it's "Put your little foot, put your little foot right there," and you skip and whirl around. They played everything from "Night and Day" to "Detour, There's a Muddy Road Ahead," "Jalisco no te Rajas" to "Do the Hucklebuck." Different bands every night but the same kind of mix.
Where did these raging wonderful musicians come from? Pachuco horns and guitar players, big-hatted country guitarists, bebop drummers, piano-players that looked like Fred Astaire. The closest I ever heard anything come close to those little bands was at the Five Spot in the late fifties. Ornette Coleman's "Ramblin'." Everybody raving how new and far-out he was. Sounded Tex-Mex to me, like a good Sonoita hoedown.

------Lucia Berlin, "Homing"

RELATED REISSUES:

As I promised myself, I listened to the 50th Anniversary Workingman's Dead today, Labor Day: YouTube rolled all sounds through my headphones right on cue, in a way I'd never noticed before (my old record player was not so good). Pitchfork review of this edition confirms Garcia and sound specialists meticulously planned the design, resulting in, as the 'fork points out, a combination of "bracing" clarity or maybe they said precision, with "weathered" textures of instruments, but I think weather is most of all generated from these songs def. being ones of experience---the rays of hopefulness come from experience of knowing you need 'em, also maybe from flashbacks. Clarity also reveals occasional vocal limitations I hadn't noticed before, ditto occasional lyrical limitations of Hunter's cracker barrel philosophizing. But many felicities of playing are now revealed (helps that I haven't listened in however long it's been), including even the double-drumming spotlight turn on "Easy Wind," which now sounds like old horses motivated to git up and dance on floorboards of the general store. I once made the mistake of listening to "Black Peter" when I was sick, not that sick, but put me off playing (or owning) the record any more---but now it sounds like one of their best studio tracks ever, incl. when they slam into, "See now how everything/Leads up to this day/It's just like every day, that's/Ever been." Yes!

Listened to most of the bonus show via archive.org: downloaded the vbr playlist and played some of it offline, even though its page is now marked "streaming only," since inclusion on the 50th Anniversary Ed., of course. Another xpost Charlie Miller flac from soundboard, and song selections go well enough with WD (charming Weir lead vocal on "Me and Bobbie McGhee"), also enjoying Bill's drumming without Mickey all through this. Several reviewers of several postings of this show say that it's not quite as hot as previous ones during this Feb. '71 visit to Port Chester, so I may check those too.

― dow, Tuesday, 8 September 2020 02:43 (three months ago) link

A bit confused by the mention of Garcia- I guess you mean the sound design of the original release, not this edition? Anyway, a great album, and "Black Peter" is a great track.

― o. nate, Tuesday, 8 September 2020 03:12 (three months ago) link

Yes, sorry, I was thinking of WD backstory in Stephen Thomas Erlewine's Pitchfork review of The Angel's Share, which I'll have to listen to:

Much of that precision can be chalked up to how the Grateful Dead mapped out all of Workingman's Dead prior to recording the album with their live-sound team of Bob Matthews and Betty Cantor, a pair who shared a co-production credit with the band. Nothing was left to chance. Matthews, Cantor, and Garcia drew up a provisional sequencing during these sessions, circulating this rough draft on demo cassettes among the band. Rehearsals came next, then the rapid sessions, outtakes of which can be heard on The Angel's Share, a digital-only collection released alongside the 50th Anniversary edition of Workingman's Dead. The chief insight provided by The Angel's Share is how Garcia kept the Dead on track, calling for changes in tempo and directing the arrangements so neither the song nor vibe is obscured. Compared to its willfully spacy predecessor Aoxomoxoa—an album the band recorded twice, as the band exhausted the possibilities of a new 16-track tape recorder while exhausting the patience and wallet of Warner Bros—the simplicity of Workingman's Dead is bracing, even refreshing, but it's the earthy, weathered grooves that give the album its distinct character and power.

― dow, Tuesday, 8 September 2020 04:17 (three months ago) link

The Feb. 71 show on on the Workingman's Dead 50th reissue is one of the best-sounding shows they've ever released. The show rocks too--the sound of Billy unchained

― J. Sam, Tuesday, 8 September 2020 12:15 (three months ago) link

I tend to be cranky about remasters, but what jumped out at me on first listen to this one is that it's very "Phil Zone."

― Sometimes clarity is the enemy imo. Modern engineering places way too much of a premium on clarity.

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Tuesday, 8 September 2020 14:38 (three months ago) link

It may well be that I would have noticed those limitations I mentioned even w/o added clarity---actually I remember thinking the sound was too spare, sparse, even, but like I said, bad record player back then---not a prob now, and bringing out the bass may well have helped; I worked in a Dirty South CD store for several years, and must have bass. If you mean the live set, no prob with it there either, so far (though I haven't listened to the whole thing yet; it's long).

― dow, Tuesday, 8 September 2020 15:04 (three months ago) link

Sorry for two "may well"s

― dow, Tuesday, 8 September 2020

Dave Alvin in 2020:

From an Old Guitar: Rare and Unreleased Recordings (7-3-20, Yep Roc)"

This 13 song collection features studio performances that I've recorded over the years for my own albums or for tribute albums but mainly they're just things I did for the pure kicks of playing music I love with musicians I love and admire.

The songs range from some originals to interpretations of compositions by dear friends like Peter David Case, Chris Smither and the late Bill Morrissey to tunes written by heroes like Willie Dixon, Bob Dylan, Lil Hardin Armstrong, Earl Hooker and Marty Robbins. The music ranges from acoustic blues and ballads to electric barroom blues, folk/rock and even a little country/rock.

There are contributions from dearly departed comrades like Chris Gaffney, Amy Farris and Bobby Lloyd Hicks as well as from old Blasters pals like Gene Taylor along with various members of The Guilty Men/Women/Ones plus help from brilliant accompanists like Greg Leisz, Cindy Cashdollar, Bob Glaub, Don Heffington, Danny Ott, Skip Edwards, Rick Shea, Chris G Miller, Wyman Reese, Dale Spalding and David J. Carpenter.

That suave Dylan-as-baritone thing seems to put too much weight on the first two tracks, "Link of Chain"(good words come through when the voice doesn't pull the links too much), and the arrangement of "Highway 61" seems wasted, but usually, when he's singing more like on early solo LPs, voice serves the songs well enough--faves are the ones where "Had a fight with the mother of my kids, I can get along with anybody what if I did, gonna go back where me and my friends used to hang around, see what's shakin' while the leaves turn brown, I'm on my way downtown." Even got maybe old buddies appearing for harmonies, steel guitar, whole thing makes me think these guys are Dead/New Riders fans--not 'heads, they gotta work, but it's not that far from downwardly mobile, wised-up but still a California love song, so yeah there's sunshine, "Inside" and out.

Also some ace instrumentals, "(Variations on Earl Hooker's Guitar Rhumba," "Perdido Street Blues, " and "Krazy and Ignatz." Even when the Dylany voice comes back, on "Peace," to an extent "Man Walks Among Us," the music has no prob, ditto on the fast shuffle finale, "Beautiful City Across The River."

So, a few I could live without, but overall seems as strong as any of his regular releases.

https://davealvin.bandcamp.com/album/from-an-old-guitar-rare-and-unreleased-recordings

Another recently posted set, an EP, Live In Austin, is Dave Alvin and Phil Alvin captured live in Austin, Texas March 14, 2014 in an intimate performance of songs written by Big Bill Broonzy, accompanied by Lisa Pankratz on drums and Brad Fordham on bass. More off-the-cuff than their Broozy-centric studio full-length, described upthread: this is non-deep but crisp---fave is inspired, though: "How You Want It Done," making me think of Mississippi hill country blues in relation to Appalachia, also a bit like the version of Jimmie Rodgers' "Never No More Blues" on a Blasters comp I hope I've still got.

https://davealvin.bandcamp.com/album/live-from-austin-dave-alvin-phil-alvini

In 2012 Yep Roc Records celebrated its 15th Anniversary with a festival called YR15. Over the course of 4 raucous days and nights 26 Artists performed for Yep Roc fans from around the world at the legendary Cats Cradle and other venues around Chapel Hill and Carrboro.

Dave Alvin performed on Thursday October 11th both solo, with Christy McWilson, John Teer from Chatham County Line and 2 electric favorites with Los Straitjackets

Yeah. Starts with solo "Harlan County Line," suave cigar voice x Dylany phrasing seeming a bit complacent, also the gotta-woman-still-waitin' (he still gets back over the line every now and then). Christy McWilson starts with "Johnny Ace Is Dead" but mainly it's Dave savoring more colorful characters, with a longass chorus then the ever-durable "Dry River," one of his classics, really, then John Teer's fiddle stirs "Whose Been Here" way up, Dave too excited to go back to too-cool now, Christy whooping it up, "Fourth of July" maintains the level---then Teer's gone, Los Straightjackets are here, for "some California folk music," as Dave Alvin proclaims, though would be even better if he went electric at this point, but still there's a real nice quiet agile acoustic (and "five-string" at that, he says) solo on "Marie Marie" (Teer would be great on this oh well). And that's all, folks. Short but semi-sweet, not up to the ones w Phil or Jimmy Dale, still worth a listen:

https://davealvin.bandcamp.com/

And then there's The Third Mind s/t---somebody said there are bonus tracks?! Will check---for now, these are the ones I heard; my take follows:

1.

Journey in Satchidananda 05:57

2.

The Dolphins 05:15

3.

Claudia Cardinale  02:53 video

4.

Morning Dew 09:18

5.

East West 16:28

6.

Reverberation 03:5

Dave Alvin (Flesheaters/Blasters/X/Knitters) Victor Krummenacher (Cracker, Camper Van Beethoven), Michael Jerome (Toadies, Better Than Ezra) and David Immerglück (Counting Crows, Camper Van Beethoven), with Jesse Sykes (of Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter): Cosmic and Kozmik blues, "psychedelic folk rock," like it says on bandcamp (Dave's big ol' Fred Neilian voice, a tad world-weary, gets lifted a bit by Sykes on Neil's "The Dolphins," and she's cool down in the choruses of 13th Floor Elevators' "Reverberation, and she gets to do all the singin' on Tim Rose's "Morning Dew," which could get to be too much of a death slog way back when the Dead etc. used to haul it out on stage, but she keeps everybody awake and igniting at just the right times here. Unperson points out these Dick Dale Middle Eastern chunnelings of Alice Coltrane's "Journey," and Dale might be a gateway for all of this---also well-absorbed Link Wray, Sonny Sharrock, John Cippolina, Bloomfield & Bishop on "East-West," with crystalline outcroppings, moonlight drives, nice.

https://thethirdmind.bandcamp.com/

Not Country, strictly speaking, but def Related, with several acoustic stringed instruments---also one electric that I've so far noticed as such, the steel guitar---being switched around from track to track, 15 of which, average time prob about 3:00 or a little shorter, fully equipped scenes and situations and thought trains rolling through, from headphone to headphone, so it's like I said about this fall's continuing volumes of G.Welch's Boots 02: The Lost Songs, though the unified effect is maybe even more striking because of the variety, which also incl. Haitian Kreyòl folk songs, like it says in the notes: perfectly compatible w Leyla McCalla's original composing, arranging and co-picking, on Vari-Colored Songs: A Tribute To Langston Hughes (2014 album, reissued 10-16-20, I think).

Traveling man LH worked and saw and heard a lot and thought it about long enough to see how to make his latest take concise, so he and his readers could keep going with fellow feeling expressed in a personalized, one-to-one way, and senses refreshed.

(His metrics are also personalized in an accessible way, and in any case she makes adaptation seem easy.)

It's a blues life too, with hope in there as well, certainly liveliness, though the New Orleans background of McCalla comes out in a leafy urban-folk-country-old-time way that isn't too nostalgic; the subject matter sure isn't.

stream etc.it here:

https://leylamccalla.bandcamp.com/releases

"Own Catergory/Sooweee Generis"

notes just now, trying to wrap brane around what it just experienced:

Little Richard, Southern Child: omg, cert worth mention try to describe finely calibrated sense of pitch, sweetly piercing and sensitive, like Joplin's "Summertime" all the time while rolling round on the farm vehicles and such, musos no prob as he makes something----something, not nec of nothing but working a few phrases not nec going anywhere but around and around earth and space certainly some robust to muscular phrases, whatever he does with them and voice very clear despite all the screaming he had done press sheet says label was like oh we don't know about him doing country or was it just that it was so out there how compare to his other new records around then? seemed pretty out there in 70s Hendrix doc Sweet girlish laughter but unsettling as in high school wtf but no complaints after all Out Dec. 4 and always

Also Related To Related:

Bettye LaVette, Blackbirds : I think of her as a Method actress song stylist, from the inside out, prob never much about, "Oh, that's a sweet bit, think I'll sing it" as "Okay, this means something to me," and you can feel the push and pull and twist and turn of that, even if you'll never know all it means to her, in her life. The comeback has been largely via songs by old white rockers, but as customized, chopped 'n' channeled vehicles, getting moreso: her 2018 Dylan collection, Things Have Changed is fearless, overall her most radical yet, and I hate using the r-word, at least as modifier.

This set is all blues as a feeling, whether or not of the genre, written by or strongly associated by women, mostly if not all of color, with some jazz in there: all modern, as the band goes where she leads, though not passively: musos can sound like, "Yeah that's bad, but whattayagonna do, and look out for that hearse now." Incl. a stalking, shuffling, actually kinda fast, yet unmistakable "Strange Fruit," and even a happy one or two, if you count "Blues For Weepers," where she seems glad to be here, anywhere she can sing for the lonely souls, heads(sounds dark and smokey), or three, counting the likewise "Drinking Again," where she sociably rhymes about smokin, jokin' tokin', without sounding like Steve Miller or Charlie Daniels.

Near-title track is the one that gives pause so far, like a vocally-shredded pile of bloody feathers, which may go against the words, which she's tweaked to 'bout how she has indeed taken broken wings and learned to fly---or is more like, positive statement in harrowing sound representing what freer living has cost her?

Bonus tracks:

So in 1972, Phil Everly did "The Air That I Breathe," produced by Duane Eddy, arranged by Everly Bros pianist Warren Zevon, and the Hollies' '74 smash follows it very closely (really wonder why co-writer Albert Hammond didn't release it as a single, since it was on the LP named for his Greatest Hit, It Never Rains in California?)

Maybe a few too many repetitions of the chorus, but man that opening/closing verse! Amazing overall, via material perfectly suited to the ethereal and granular focus of the Everlys sound:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNwTWN9CTy8 

(wiki sez

The 1992 Radiohead song "Creep" uses a similar chord progression and shares some melodic content with the 1972 version of "The Air That I Breathe".[5] As a result, the song's publisher sued Radiohead for copyright infringement and a settlement was reached in which Hammond and Mike Hazlewood were given co-writing credits as well as a portion of the royalties.[6][7][8]   All good: "Creep" is decent, and an early career milestone, worth paying the piper.)

One of my fave Rosanne tracks from later on----she gets too or the wrong kind of arty for me sometimes, but this is the best kind of bonus trace: "Biloxi," written by Jesse Winchester: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDhV5SscEgc

Frank Kogan replies:

Think her "tastefulness" – i.e., restraint – is a potential virtue here, saves it from going all drippy. –In all these years I've never formed an opinion of Jesse Winchester except to assume on the basis of too few listens that he's AC-leaning soft folk-rock. I got to make fun of his lyrics once in a Gary Allan review:

https://www.villagevoice.com/2004/02/10/a-well-rounded-singer-discovers-that-the-earth-is-as-well

Me: Yeah, her restraint--like the acting teacher said, "Feel it then don't--make it find its way out, if it can"--contains and presses down (not too hard) on the floaty notions, dreams, memories---and twee line "The stars will find their faces," barf, but fits, the way she sings it, with a certain urgency: this stuff matters, for now, and what's maybe about to happen. Who was it, the Motels, did "Suddenly, Last Summer."

And finally, a great swan song and intro: one of my fave tracks of  the year----from  the 2020 expanded reissue of  Giant Sand's 1991 Ramp,  orig. of which was highly acclaimed! Even xgau dug it---but so far Gelb's murmur doesn't seem to match the Television etc. guitaring that well--- nevertheless, here they 'low their olde pal Pappy Allen to sing a chestnut, with a show of strong and musical geezer lungs, even more inspiring now   https://giantsandmusic.bandcamp.com/track/welcome-to-my-world-3

                                                                     don allred