Thursday, February 20, 2020

Top 50 Songs of the Decade, #8 - "Lightning Bolt," Jake Bugg

For me, this song's life began with a Gatorade commercial.  This one was on HEAVY rotation when it first came out; you could not watch a sporting event without seeing it multiple times.  After several times wondering "WHAT IS THAT SONG?," I finally Googled "Gatorade commerical lightning bolt" (it seemed likely that was the song's name), and lo and behold, this popped up:



It's one of those songs that can easily be described as "timeless," because there probably isn't an era since rock 'n roll began that it wouldn't fit, and wouldn't sound great.  It's also a classic driving song, one of those that just screams to be turned up as high as the dial (and the eardrums) will allow.

Top 50 Songs of the Decade, #8 - "Lightning Bolt," Jake Bugg.

Sunday, February 16, 2020

Top 50 Songs of the Decade, #9 - "Best Years of My Life," Pistol Annies



"Hankering" is such a great word.  I'm not exactly sure why it appeals to me so much, but it's one of the words that I try to work into a conversation, or online dialogue, as often as I can.

The fact that "hankering" is used in "Best Years of My Life," however, is not why it made the Top Ten.  It made the Top Ten because it's a truly great song by one of the truly great groups - and I mean, really really great - of the entire decade.

For the uninitiated, Pistol Annies is comprised of, from left to right in the video, Ashley Monroe, Angaleena Presley, and Miranda Lambert.  In total, the trio released twelve albums during the decade of the 2010s: three Pistol Annies albums, four solo albums by Lambert, three solo albums by Monroe, and two solo albums by Presley.  Two of those albums (Presley's "American Middle Class" and Pistol Annies' "Interstate Gospel") made my Top 30 of the Decade, and if I expanded that list to 50, Lambert's "Platinum" and Monroe's "The Blade" would have joined them.

In short, they're great.  As in, great on an historical scale.  They are at the vanguard of the new wave of women country artists that have scorched the musical world with their boldness, their brilliance, in recent years.  Although you may not know it, since country radio is still loathe to give them the spotlight they deserve.

"Best Years of My Life" is a great place to begin diving into their catalog.

Top 50 Songs of the Decade, #9 - "Best Years of My Life," Pistol Annies.

Friday, February 14, 2020

Top 50 Songs of the Decade, #10 - "When the Master Calls the Roll," Rosanne Cash

To kick off the Top Ten - THE TOP TEN! - we have, without a doubt, the best Civil War ballad that's been written in the 21st Century.  And one with a fascinating back story - after all, it's not every day that an artist collaborates on a song with her husband and her ex-husband.



The song began as a collaboration between John Leventhal (Cash's husband) and Rodney Crowell (Cash's ex-husband) even before Rosanne herself entered the picture, with Leventhal giving the melody to Crowell for potential use on one of his albums with Emmylou Harris.

But let's let Ms. Cash tell the story:

We kept the first four lines that Rodney had—it was an actual 19th century personals ad. I wanted to keep that and then turn the rest of it into the Civil War song, where she found him through a personals ad. It’s based on two of my own ancestors. I researched them and we wrote it together. He came over to my house, we wrote part of it at the table, and then we wrote part of it by email.

So maybe it's also the best song ever (at least partly) written by email?  I can't really answer that question, since I have no idea how many songs have been written by email.  There can't be that many, right?  By the way, for a more complete picture of how the song was written, please check out the excellent interview with Cash and Leventhal by Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers, here.

Top 50 Songs of the Decade, #10 - "When the Master Calls the Roll," Rosanne Cash.

Thursday, February 13, 2020

Drive-By Truckers: Fighting the Good Fight

"The Unraveling," the twelfth studio album from Drive-By Truckers, is not a party record.  You don't really need to play it to figure that out; all you have to do is read some of the song titles: "Armageddon's Back in Town," "Heroin Again," "Babies in Cages," "Awaiting Resurrection."  None of those titles bring to mind a bunch of hoopin' and hollerin', beer or two in hand, while dancing on the top of a table all night.

The song titles are not false advertising, as evidenced by a sampling of these lyrics from "Heroin Again":

Insinuate a fever dream
Instigate a requiem
A deafening explosion of shame
An orgasm inside your brain
Silly young men
Why you using heroin
Thought you knew better than that

Or these, from "Babies in Cages":

And are we so divided
That we can't at least agree
This ain't the country that
Our granddads fought for us to be?
Babies in cages

"The Unraveling" is hardly DBT's first foray into the realm of the political.  For more than two decades, Patterson Hood has been exploring the contradictions he encountered during the course of his days growing up and becoming an adult in Alabama - a phenomenon he's often called "the duality of the Southern thing."  The difference is that in the band's earlier days, a song like "The Three Great Alabama Icons" (one of whom was George Wallace) might be bracketed by obvious party anthems like "Dead, Drunk & Naked" and "Let There Be Rock," and a song like "Two Daughters and a Beautiful Wife" (about the murder of Bryan Harvey and his family) would be immediately followed by "3 Dimes Down," possibly the greatest party song that Mike Cooley ever wrote (and I'll let you look up what that one is all about).  Even the band's 2016 "American Band," which delved more deeply into current day politics than any previous DBT record, feels light as air in comparison to the new record.  

The album's centerpiece, and the song that will be talked about the most, is "Thoughts and Prayers." In this era of mass shootings in common public gathering areas, those simple words have taken on a much different meaning.  Rather than a sincere (if ultimately inadequate) expression of sympathy and sorrow, they're now viewed by many as a symbol of a generation's inability (or lack of will) to take any meaningful action to stop something that everyone agrees is a horrible societal development.  Patterson Hood leaves no doubt as to which side of the argument he is on:

When my children's eyes look at me and they ask me to explain
It hurts me that I have to look away
The powers that be are in for shame and comeuppance
When Generation Lockdown has their day
They'll throw the bums all out and drain the swamp for real
Perp walk then down the Capitol steps and show them how it feels
Tramp the dirt down, Jesus, you can pray the rod they'll spare
Stick it up your ass with your useless thoughts and prayers

It's one thing for an individual to make a statement like this.  But when an artist whose livelihood depends in large part on the support of a demographic which quite likely (and accurately) will take this song as an affront to the very existence of that demographic, that's something very different.  There's a lot at stake for a band to be writing and playing songs like this, and while DBT never has (and never likely will) reach the heights of popularity of a group like the Dixie Chicks, we all saw what happened to them when a certain line was crossed.  Even a group as popular as they were at the time saw their audience change dramatically, pre- and post-comments about George W. Bush.

The album's sound matches its material.  Having gone through numerous personnel changes over the years, since 2014 DBT's sonic approach has been focused primarily on a guitar-pronged attack (sometimes two, and sometimes three, when sometimes keyboardist Jay Gonzalez picks up his ax).  That's true here as well, but there's also the added element of the sound mix, which feels constricted throughout, and almost claustrophobic - another signal that "The Unraveling" is a very different record than those which preceded it.

"The Unraveling" is relentless and unforgiving.  Might it have benefited from a bit of lightness, amidst all the darkness?  Perhaps.  But there's no questioning that "The Unraveling" is Drive-By Truckers' bravest album.

Saturday, February 08, 2020

For Posterity: The Albums of 2019

  • Colorado - Neil Young & Crazy Horse
  • White Noise/White Lines - Kelsey Waldon
  • Desert Dove - Michaela Anne
  • Wildcard - Miranda Lambert
  • Closer Than Together - The Avett Brothers
  • Ride Me Back Home - Willie Nelson
  • While I'm Livin' - Tanya Tucker
  • In the Morse Code of Brake Lights - The New Pornographers
  • The Walk - Bonnie Bishop
  • Llego Navidad - Los Lobos
  • Sound and Fury - Sturgill Simpson
  • The Highwomen - The Highwomen
  • When We Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? - Billie Eilish
  • Jaime - Brittany Howard
  • Norman Fucking Rockwell - Lana del Rey
  • Texas - Rodney Crowell
  • Okie - Vince Gill
  • The Center Won't Hold - Sleater-Kinney
  • Texas Piano Man - Robert Ellis
  • American Love Song - Ryan Bingham
  • Purple Mountains - Purple Mountains
  • Black Pumas - Black Pumas
  • Mint Condition - Caroline Spence
  • Titanic Rising - Weyes Blood
  • Western Stars - Bruce Springsteen
  • I Am Easy to Find - The National
  • Father of the Bride - Vampire Weekend
  • My Songs - Sting
  • there is no Other - Rhiannon Giddens & Francesco Turrisi
  • Walk Through Fire - Yola
  • What It Is - Hayes Carll
  • Fever Breaks - Josh Ritter
  • The Delta Sweete Revisited - Mercury Rev
  • Cash Cabin Sessions, Vol. 3 - Todd Snider
  • Absolute Zero - Bruce Hornsby
  • When You're Ready - Molly Tuttle
  • Jade Bird - Jade Bird
  • On the Line - Jenny Lewis
  • Patty Griffin - Patty Griffin
  • Girl - Maren Morris
  • Remind Me Tomorrow - Sharon Van Etten
  • Quiet Signs - Jessica Pratt
  • Songs for Judy - Neil Young
  • Teal Album - Weezer

Top 50 Songs of the Decade, #11 - "New York Banker," Todd Snider

His Wikipedia page describes Todd Snider as "an American singer-songwriter with a musical style that combines American, alt-country and folk. 

Well, this one is a rocker, plain and simple. 



The song is the perfect musical companion to the films Margin Call and The Big Short, which in very different ways tell the story of the 2008 market collapse.  Here, that collapse reaches all the way to a high school teacher, down in Arkansas.  And the story doesn't have a happy ending.

It's one of the catchiest refrains you'll hear - listen to this song a few times, and I promise you won't be able to get the phrase "Good things happen to bad people" out of your head.  The year it was released, that phrase was the perfect description of someone who unfortunately spilled over into my life from time to time, so the song had particular resonance. 

Top 50 Songs of the Decade, #11 - "New York Banker," Todd Snider.

Sunday, February 02, 2020

Top 50 Songs of the Decade, #12 - "South Dakota," James McMurtry

As befits a man whose mother was an English professor and whose father is the Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Larry McMurtry, James McMurtry knows how to spin a musical yarn.



The lyrics of "South Dakota" read like they could be an outline for a well-filmed, well-directed but somewhat depressing film about a young man who comes home from the war, tries to make a go at life in South Dakota, but following one calamity after another, reluctantly re-ups for one more tour overseas.  Close with the tight shot of the protagonist getting on the plane, shaking his head.  Fade to black.

There ain't much between the pole and South Dakota
And barbed wire won't stop the wind
I won't get nothing here but broke and older
I might as well re-up again

Top 50 Songs of the Decade, #12 - "South Dakota," James McMurtry.