i struggled with this one a bit. i read a lot of reviews of this album before i finally pulled the trigger on it. i have nearly everything this band has ever recorded, and i have always been appreciative of their depiction of the south from which they hail – distinctive from the cliche of the southern rock bands they are always compared to. but i was warned that they had gone up front politically on this one, as they felt that it was time to voice their concerns more explicitly. they are getting a lot of blow back from fans, and their response is that they really don’t care. they have pointed out that they have always had an element of political undertones to their work, and if you haven’t noticed, then you weren’t really listening. and i would agree with that. on this release, they have taken it to a whole new level. eleven tracks -patterson hood wrote six, mike cooley the other five. i could probably do a whole blog post on this, but my musical wanderings tend to require a checklist of criteria to qualify as good, and ‘agreeing with the songwriter politically’ is not high on that list. in other words, if you get your political guidance from musicians and other celebrities, you probably need to expand your source material. but i think we are in a time when we need to listen to each other more than we need to shut each other out, so i bought it. and i am glad i did.  at the end of the day, this is just a really solid and inspired album. patterson mentions that they have always been fans of the clash, and he wonders if this one is essentially ‘london calling’ meets marty robbins. there is something to that, although i also hear songs that would fit on neil young’s ‘ragged glory’. i may not agree with the premise of some of their material, but there is no doubt that they have a sincere passion for their beliefs, and it comes through in every cut on this album.

and not every cut has a political bent. in fact, in my opinion, most of the best songs do not. ‘ever south’ is a song about relocating to oregon, and ‘baggage’ is about robin williams and dealing with depression. cooley’s’ramon casiano’ is a song about a controversial episode in a past nra president’s youth, and the ‘guns of umpqua’ is an intertwined story of the fatal shootings in a college near patterson’s home and a camping trip he took in the canyons nearby. it may be the best song on the album. maybe the worst song is ‘what it means’, which seems to be getting the most attention. musically, it is wonderful – catchy song structure, solid playing by the band, and an impassioned rendering of the lyrics. but to me this is one of patterson’s worst songwriting concoctions. essentially a diatribe about the black lives matter movement, he gets many of the facts wrong about some of the events he uses to build his case, then goes off on some tangent about scientific achievements, fox news, prejudice, and rapists. he ends the song with the line ‘but don’t look to me for answers cuz i don’t know what it means’. i think he could have done better on this one. if you are trying to bring attention to an issue through your song, it might be good to get your facts straight and not call your opponents racists (there are a number of references to racial prejudices throughout the album). as the late great democratic ny senator daniel moynihan once said, ‘you are entitled to your own opinions, but you are not entitled to your own facts’. as i recently told my daughters, if i am in a discussion about political issues, and the person i am debating starts throwing down the race card, then i know that i have a real good chance of winning the argument. if you insult my intelligence and just insist that my motivations can only be driven by hatred, i will be less likely to listen to your argument. learn to understand and appreciate why they might think differently than you. it is in this spirit that i listened to this release all the way through at least ten times before sitting down to write this. patterson hood writes some of the best liner notes, period, and on this one he tries to lay out his arguments as to why they went a little more provocative than before. buy the album. read his notes first, listen with an open mind, then take in one of the great rock and roll albums of the year. one of their best.

 

great new release by norah. she has bounced around in styles in the last few years, all done very tastefully and competently, but here she returns to the format that made her famous. much of it is piano based jazz orientations with a country blues shading, but she also throws in a few pop laden gems as well. all originals, save for three covers – neil young, duke ellington, and horace silver. on the latter two i was pleasantly surprised to hear my old friend wayne shorter on sax. they both sound better than ever.

 

 

john prine just turned 70. on his new release, he revisits the album he put out in 1999 after recovering from cancer, ‘in spite of ourselves’. that release was comprised of duets with some of his favorite female vocalists, and consisted mostly of covers of old country songs. some of those songbirds return here, plus a few new ones. alison kraus, miranda lambert, kasey musgraves, susan tedeschi, holly williams, amanda shires and others join in to pay tribute to one of the great artists of our generation. his voice is older and gravelly, but it is clear he still has that spunk of his youth, and his back up band performs wonderfully here.

 

wilco puts out a follow up to their ‘star wars’ release from last year. supposedly it was recorded in the same sessions from that album, but it is hard for me to hear the similarities. this feels like a totally different vibe. the overall feel is a little more laid back, measured, and not exactly uplifting. and i don’t mean the latter in a bad way. this isn’t a cd you put in the car on the way home after work on friday night. but it is one you can listen to when you have some time to appreciate a different twist on the world as tweedy sees it. the last couple of years have seen some interesting times in this country and, although none of the lyrics are expressly political, the anxiety seems to bubble to the surface here. and of course i may just be projecting. possibly somewhat related – you can usually pick up tweedy’s influences in his work, and i seem to hear a lot of john lennon in his vocals on this one. this band just gets better with age. quite simply one of the best groups out there playing today. if they come to your town, you should go see them.