Tag Archives: Alternative Country

Richard Buckner : Bloomed

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 Richard Buckner Bloomed album cover jpeg

 

It’s been 20 years since Bloomed was originally released on German label Glitterhouse Records. It became, at least for me, an integral part of the Alternative Country music experience. 20 years later I still count it as one of the very best. On top of my head I can only count Uncle Tupelo’s March 16-20, 1992 as having a similar profound impact on my life as a music lover and being quite as excellent as well as related in sound, from that period.

Fast forward to March 2014 and the album is re-released on Buckner’s current label home Merge Records, bless them for it. Haven’t got that release (yet!), but I hope that some of you reading and not knowing what I am talking about, will possible be encouraged to check it out (it’s even released on vinyl, all you vinyl buffs out there).

Let me tell you, you are in for a hell of a treat. Some of the facts first. At the time living in San Francisco and playing in a band called The Doubters, Buckner recorded this album in Lubbock and Austin, TX with producer Llyoyd Maines and a bunch of artists that Maines recruited, Texas music legend Butch Hancock amongst them. To say these musicians and their contributions are merely the icing on the cake would be both wrong and right. Right, because, as the 5 bonus tracks (also included on the Merge re-release) on the 1999 Rykodisc/Slow River re-release I am writing about here, attest to, show, that none of the 12 tracks on the original album would be something short of brilliant without them. Wrong because they are absolutely stunning and outstanding. (Almost) exclusively acoustic instruments, no drums (just a tiny bit of percussion) add to the airy, open and crystal clear sound, with Buckner’s striking (once heard, never forgotten) Californian drawl that is very well suited to the music found on here.

To call it Alternative Country is maybe a little bit misleading but it’s certainly not straight, old-fashioned Country either. It’s very hard to name personal faves on here – I love all of the 17 songs on here, really. The range of different moods encountered on Bloomed range from the dark, brooding and slow (22, Mud, This Is Where), to the lively, uptempo songs, such as Daisychain and Rainsquall and everything in between. Buckner’s excellent acoustic guitar work is always featured prominent in the mix, but as I said before, the cast of aces accompanying him add a whole lot to making the album as great as it is too. Take Surprise, AZ, featuring some exquisite harmonica by Butch Hancock and a Dobro by Lloyd Maines alongside Buckner’s acoustic guitar and what you get is one of the best and loveliest songs I have ever heard. Album opener Blue And Wonder is augmented to fine effect by Joe Carr’s mandolin, Rainsquall features a what I suppose to be slightly distorted and quite loud pedal steel guitar to rather dramatic, but well suited to the lyrics of the song, effect.

To mention all of the great contributions Lloyd Maines adds to Bloomed would be very cumbersome indeed, but as he is well-known musician I hope some of you know what he is capable of – being not intimately acquainted with his work I would say he outclassed himself on here (feel free to correct me).

Also adding to considerably to  Bloomed’s quality are Buckner’s lyrics. Although they are mainly about personal matters and relationships, both imagined and experienced, but when listening to the album I have to say I’m taking a long road trip in my mind. Imagining it starting in California and ending in Texas you probably get the right idea of what I’m talking about.

Sights and people encountered in small, modest towns on a long drive (The Last Ride) and during a rainstorm on the highway (Rainsquall) while thinking about a woman in a ‘Gauzy Dress In The Sun’. Perhaps it’s indicative of the American psyche of having time to think about you, your own little world and the people inhabiting it while being on the road is what the album’s lyrics are all about. They contribute a whole lot to Bloomed’s appeal for me.

It’s a real shame that Richard Buckner’s career has been so fragmented and never lived up to the things promised on this album – I pretty much lost track of his work after 1998’s Since. Maybe it’s the fact that he’s supposedly not being very easy to work with preventing him having a stable working relationship with some people, musicians and label-wise, that would be befitting for his music and career. But that’s pure speculation on my part and he’s worked with Merge Records for the last 10 years so I may be wrong.

In any case, Bloomed is an utterly fabulous album, and my words cannot begin to adequately describe its class and certainly not how much I adore it.

http://www.richardbuckner.com

The Pines : Tremolo and Dark So Gold

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The Pines are the next in a line of great artists out of the Midwest scene that brought us Greg Brown, Dave Moore and Bo Ramsey, all artists I hold in very high regard indeed, as you will undoubtedly have noticed if you visited my blog before (see here, here or here or have a look at my tag cloud). Not only share two members of the Pines the surname with Bo Ramsey, they are indeed his sons Benson and Alex. Benson is one of two principal songwriters alongside David Huckfelt, his brother Alex can be heard on keyboards and piano. They are based in Minneapolis, also home to their label Red House Records. I have to applaud The Pines for chosing Red House as their label home anyway, as it is perhaps not one of the hippest labels to be on if you are young musicians (which they are). Which of course isn’t to say Red House isn’t a good label as far as I’m concerned, just the opposite as I have come to have a tremendous love for a lot of their artists (and I am by far not finished exploring their roster in more detail).

The fact that the Ramsey brothers and Huckfelt hail from Iowa is very much in evidence in their music and extends to the cover design of both records that feature barns, scarecrows, fields and woods. Given their ages, naturally their sound is a tad more modern than that of the artists mentioned above, although it has to be said, rather marginally so.

Having found out about the Ramsey brothers involvement in The Pines somewhere I wasted no time to do a bit of research and luckily found the live in studio recording of one of Dark So Gold’s best tracks All The While (see my post from a few weeks ago) and I have to say that the live version is actually even a bit better than the one on the album, as it is a perfect rendition with a superb arrangement (see the outstanding and understated percussion work of drummer J.T. Bates for example).

 

The Pines Dark So Gold album cover jpeg

Dark So Gold (2012)

Their style can be described as Gothic Americana Folk, with some moderate blues leanings, and it’s fitting then that I hear traces of Sixteen Horsepower in a number of songs, most notably Be There In Bells, which is one of the few tracks on either album which could almost be described as a rock song – thankfully, and surprisingly given their young age, in my opinion is the fact that they totally avoid the temptation to ‘rock out’ and make do without the usual distorted guitars that more often than not go with bands their age – I for one am very happy about that.

Others hear traces of Ryan Adams in Benson Ramsey’s vocal delivery (Rob at 45spins), a comparison they can probably live with well too, I should imagine.

As mentioned above, instead of turning up their amps, they fortunately prefer to imbue their music with melancholy and a rather peaceful (if sometimes a tad moody), dreamy atmosphere and introspective and rather soft arrangements that don’t sound one bit lifeless or dull. Things are helped further by the skilful acoustic-electric guitar interplay and Alex Ramsey’s keyboard/piano sounds. In contrast to the predecessor Tremolo the band also took on a more hands-on role with producing the album that shows how much they have grown together as a band. Three tracks, Moonrise, IA , Grace Hill and album closer Losing the Stars are rather short instrumental tracks, short in length maybe but high on ambience. Other highlights for me on Dark So Gold are the dark opener Cry Cry Crow, the lovely and slightly uptempo If By Morning and the rather optimistic and catchy and folky Chimes.

 

The Pines Tremolo Cover jpeg

Tremolo, the 2009 predecessor to Dark So Gold doesn’t sound much different compared to their latest release. The main difference being the fact that at this stage The Pines were actually a duo comprised of Benson Ramsey and David Huckfelt also most of the other musicians that can be heard on Dark So Gold are on here as well. Also noteworthy and clearly audible is the bigger role Bo Ramsey does play on here. This can most outstandingly heard on Behind The Time which features one of his trademark sparse, understated and soulful electric guitar solos that literally make the hairs on my arms stand up almost every time I listen to the song – nobody I can think of on top of my head can do that sort of thing better than him. He also does provide the beautiful Weissenborn that can be heard on Lonesome Tremolo Blues.Alex Ramsey’s keyboards are given slightly more space to shape a couple of songs, namely a contemporary update of Mississippi John Hurt’s Spike Driver Blues and album closer Shiny Shoes. The album is chock-full of excellent songs, I especially love the exceedingly tuneful (and fittingly accompanied by brushed drums and/or percussion) songs such as Heart & Bones, Meadows of Dawn and Skipper And His Wife – the latter being written by Spider John Koerner, apparently a semi-legendary Folk artist I wasn’t familiar with at all until recently, but one I will most definitely be investigating in more detail in the near future – Skipper And His Wife being an absolutely wonderful song, although the arrangement on here I suppose is quite different from his.

The Pines offer a very welcome alternative to the myriad Alternative bands around – theirs is not the sound of an urban generation but decidedly just the opposite. Their voice is one infused with true values and a rural background which is pervading pretty much every inch of their sound and making them something rather special and absolutely cherishable in today’s music scene.

http://www.thepinesmusic.com

 

 

The Pines : All The While (Live On 89.3 The Current)

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A brand new discovery for me (they have been around for a few years though), The Pines totally enchanted me with this utterly fabulous and gorgeous version of their song All The While from their 2012 album Dark So Gold, which I don’t know yet, as I have only just ordered it. But if it’s only half as good as this track hints at, you probably will be reading about it on here soon. One of them is also the son of Bo Ramsey whom you can see talked/written about here before. Or here. And a few times more. If you also take into account that they are on Red House Records it’s perhaps no wonder they are this good. Anyway, here it is:

 

Rachel Ries : Laurel Lake EP

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The first time I ever heard of Rachel Ries was spotting this poster in late September in a shop window in Fairfield, Iowa, announcing here show there a few days later.

Rachel Ries show poster

Unfortunately I couldn’t hang around to go and catch that show as I had to continue my travels, so I decided to check her out later that evening in my motel room on the internet. I quickly found her bandcamp page and discovered the Laurel Lake EP. I immediately liked what I heard (a lot), especially Letting You In, which took hold of my heart immediately. It took me until last week to finally get around to buying the EP and now I am sad I didn’t discover her fine work earlier, when I would have had the chance to buy one of the 417 CD’s with handsewn covers, so now I am left with a considerably less nice burned CD, oh well.

The music however does make amends for that somewhat. It’s excellent stuff from start to finish. The songs on the EP were played and recorded alone by Rachel Ries in a house next to Laurel Lake in Tennessee and the EP was originally released in early 2012. It starts with I’ve Forgiven Time of which I am especially fond of the accordion/acoustic guitar arrangement and her vocals are shown at their most expressive (on this EP anyway). Holiest Day might be my favourite song on the EP at the moment, a quiet, gentle song with reflective lyrics and a mood that could almost be described as pastoral, it’s utterly lovely. As mentioned above, Letting You In was the first song of the EP I loved – and I still very much do, it’s possibly the most upbeat and cute song (at least musically) on here, starting off with a single keyboard/electric piano accompaniment and then the build-up from a clean to a mildly distorted electric guitar. The lyrics on the other hand are making clear that she’s not exactly a happy camper, describing feelings of guilt and regret  ‘… I know I am to blame, I left my bike in the rain and snow, through seasons I watch it rust and fade, I know I am to blame…’. Top song, that.

Next song Willow sees her straying on slightly darker ground, the stark, bleak lyrics only increasing the song’s dramatic atmosphere – all in a low-key way of course, no post-rock crescendos to be found on here of course. You Can Go is even more downbeat in mood and theme – from the first time I heard it I had to think about some of my feelings during the slow death of my mother a few years ago, although I may be misinterpreting the lyrics which seem to be about letting somebody go you feel close to. It’s haunting, but all the better for it.

Standing Still brings this 22minute EP to a rather conciliatory close, with a mellow, sunny feeling – although the lyrics feature tornadoes.

I am very glad I stumbled upon this poster, who knows if I would have ever heard about this extraordinary new(ish, she has released a few albums in her career) voice in the Alternative Folk-Rock scene otherwise. Her, undoubtedly equally fine, new album Ghost Of A Gardener will be released on February 18, 2014, and I guess you will be able to find a review of it on here then. In the meantime, if this sounds like the kind of music you are interested in, do yourself a favor and head over to Rachel’s Bandcamp page http://rachelries.bandcamp.com and check out this gem of an EP full of homemade charm.

For more information check out her website at http://www.rachelries.com

Pieta Brown : Mercury

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Pieta Brown Mercury Cover

Pieta Brown : Mercury

(2011 Red House Records)

 Pieta Brown is Greg Brown’s daughter and married to Bo Ramsey, a longtime musical partner of Greg Brown. So you could say the apple doesn’t fall far from the stem, listening to Mercury. It’s released on Red House Records, the label Greg Brown releases his albums on as well (and that he founded back in 1981) and does feature Bo Ramsey, who delivers his always outstanding and tasteful guitar work throughout the album. In contrast to Ramsey’s fine 2008 album Fragile (see my review here: http://wp.me/p3wknx-4t) he’s accompanied by another guitar player, Richard Bennett, on most/all tracks. Another (rather more prominent) guest on the album is The Dire Straits’ Mark Knopfler who is playing another guitar on So Many Miles.

It’s the first album by Pieta Brown I bought (but it won’t be the last) – and I like it a lot. The sound is a bit more contemporary than on either Greg Brown’s or Bo Ramsey’s albums, but that’s of course completely natural, given she does belong to a different generation. It doesn’t mean though that she doesn’t sound like a young women very much informed by her upbringing and (thankfully) possessing none of the hip big city vibes you could expect.

The sound is both modern and rustic at the same time, her voice the most defining characteristic on the album, at once a bit childlike and clear as well as self-assured and a tad raspy, hard to describe for me, but easy to love.

Naturally for me, the tracks with the least musical accompaniment are the ones I like best, namely I Don’t Mind or No Words Now (which isn’t THAT stripped down, but extremely lovely nevertheless). The album starts with the life-affirming and up-tempo Be With You, the next track Butterfly Blues is a fine showcase for Bo Ramsey’s trademark economic, bluesy lead guitar work – but it’s more than that, as it’s also an excellent song. Title song Mercury and the following How Much Of my Love are some of the more dreamy songs very well suited to her voice. I’m Gone and I Want It Back are lyrically, and in the case of I’m Gone musically, some of the more muscular and self-confident songs, the first one a fast(ish) Blues-Rock song and the second a slow, gorgeous Blues-Pop-Waltz song with a lovely string accompaniment.

Night All Day is the only track I find quite hard to like, a bit too bluesy for my taste. Closing Time is somewhat disappointingly not the Tom Waits song (would have loved to hear what they could have made out of that) but it’s a splendid song nevertheless. I rather like Glory to Glory a lot too – its fun, with a number of varied guitar parts, one of it sounding slightly old-timey, and I love the simple drums/percussion work on it too.

Mercury is a brilliant album and Pieta Brown well above most the other female Country-Folk-Pop artists of her generation, both as a songwriter and as a singer if you ask me.

 

Slaid Cleaves : Rust Belt Fields

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Ever the songwriter for thoughtful songs about people who possibly don’t quite get what they deserve, but try hard one way or the other nevertheless, Slaid Cleaves has written yet another of his beautiful, melancholic songs.

It also shows that , even in 2011 (or 2013 for that matter), you don’t need anything else than an acoustic guitar if your songs are good.

Steve Earle : The Warner Bros. Years

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Steve Earle The Warner Bros. Years Cover

Steve Earle : The Warner Bros. Years

(2013 Shout Factory)

 Steve Earle has been of my favorite songwriters for a very long time – I pretty much own all of his albums, starting with Guitar Town. Funnily, two of the three original albums included in this fine, if slightly pricey, box set weren’t among them – his 1996 album I Feel Alright and its follow-up El Corazon. The third one though, Train A Comin’ has probably been my 2nd favorite Earle album after Copperhead Road. Earle himself claims that El Corazon and Train A Comin’ are better records than Copperhead Road in the short interview printed and opening, the 30+ pages booklet which also includes the lyrics of the studio albums featured here. It also features extensive liner notes by The Wire creator David Simon. Earle acted on a couple of episodes and his song I Feel Alright was used in one episode. His version of Way Down In the Whole was also used as the opening tune in Season 5 (which I wasn’t aware of before, as I am still watching season 4 at the moment). His connection with The Wire is probably befitting his life story, as he was incarcerated on drugs charges and all the material on The Warner Bros Years stems from the period of the first few years after he was released from jail. Also included is a previously unissued live recording from December 1995 on CD, and a DVD with a live concert recorded as part of his parole arrangement (apparently it was recorded for MTV, which shows in the style it’s made).

As I said, Train A Comin’ is very dear to me, so I’ll probably write about that some time in the future, but for now I will start with El Corazon.

Steve Earle El Corazon cover

El Corazon

(1997)

 As I wrote before, for some reason I can’t remember, El Corazon previously passed me by. However, after discovering the lovely video of a live performance by Steve Earle and Emmylou Harris (see my previous post) of Ft. Worth Blues, a song I immediately loved and that was so far unbeknownst to me, I decided to check that out and found out about the recently released box set. Emmylou Harris’ voice is sadly missing from the Ft. Worth Blues version on here (she guests on Taneytown though), but it’s still one of the very best songs he’s ever written and recorded – a lovely, touching ballad and ode to Townes Van Zandt (he also named his son Justin Townes Earle after him). It’s closing the album and the equally wonderful, slow and gentle ballad Christmas In Washington are bookending the album rather nicely, which is also appropriate as the rest of the tracks stray pretty far from that direction musically. Where Ft. Worth Blues is intensely personal, the lyrics of Christmas In Washington are quite a bit more political, they are concerned with the presidential elections in 1996 and a chorus wishing for the return of Woody Guthrie and others fighting for the good in society such as Cisco Houston and Martin Luther King – a hymn for the good in people wherever they live and whatever the circumstances. As hinted at above, the rest of the 12 tracks on the album are stylistically quite different from each other – starting with 2nd track Taneytown, almost possessing Neil Young & Crazy Horse qualities, slow burning and hard rocking at the same time, though not as extreme in length and intensity perhaps. If You Fall is a mid-tempo Country-Rock song, not particularly exciting or one of the best songs on here maybe, but a good song nevertheless.

 I Still Carry You Around offers yet another direction, it’s recorded with the Del McCoury band, who were later to accompany him on a whole album, the brilliant The Mountain. So, as you can probably imagine, it’s an up-tempo and good-natured Bluegrass-romp. Telephone Road is a very-catchy Folk/Country-Rock song featuring some nice background vocals by the Fairfield Four and a Saxophone (not that often heard on an Steve Earle album), it’s slightly unusual (for his standards) but highly effective.

 Somewhere Out There reminds me a little bit of his earliest work on Guitar Town and Exit O, mixed with some 60’s Power-Pop (the background vocals and the ringing guitars), which I like a lot. You Know The Rest and especially N.Y.C. are the both good time tracks – the first one with a distinctive Country-bent, and the latter featuring the hard-rocking The Supersuckers, a welcome return to the sounds of Copperhead Road – (not-so-clean perhaps) good fun.

 Poison Lovers is a, true to the theme of the lyrics, slightly melancholic mid-tempo Folk-Rock song with affecting female vocals courtesy of Earle’s longtime musical partner’s Ray Kennedy’s wife Siobhan Kennedy. The Other Side Of Town is purely old-timey Country complete with 78’-record crackling’ sound and the classic title and lyrics to boot, not many people could do that as convincingly as Steve Earle. Here I Am (featuring his son Justin Townes Earle on guitar) is a short, furious Rock’n’Roll/

Country-Punk track – I love the uhhhh and ahhhh backing vocals. Great stuff.

So, while I might not totally agree with Earle’s statement that El Corazon is the better album compared with Copperhead Road, I have to agree that it’s definitely a return to form, and has to be counted as one of his best, and that’s saying something.