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Nashville Scene Poll
Jan. 2nd, 2008 04:00 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
anthonyeaston.livejournal.com( I thought that you guys would want to see what i thought was good this year--it only includes work i have made comments for, and it was shockingly indie, for that i apologise. )Top Ten Country Albums:
1. Golden Opportunities, Okkervill River. Not the one that was traditionally released, but the one that was given free over the net—for a variety of reasons, because I think this is the way for finding patterns, for figuring out how new sounds function, because the only way to sink the pirates is to go into the sea, and because it's a great album. Aside from all the meta stuff about the net as delivery device, the aching vocals, the crystalline drumming, the wheezing harmonicas are uniquely them, which makes the claiming of a cover album an act of great self confidence.
2. Corb Lund, Horse Solider! Horse Solider! I think this album got me mostly, because of its deep moral ambiguity. In a world of convenience, pleasure and kowtowing, this album is unsure of where to fit in, and the deep discomfort about his relationship to G-d, to history, to war, and to the company of men, is profoundly discomforting. He knows what is wrong and what has ben wrong, but does to know how to fix it. Also, beautiful vocals, and a sense of dramatic irony and narrative construction that astonishes.
3. Taylor Swift, Taylor Swift. An 18 year old singing about how sad it feels to be 18, the Connie Francis of New Nashville, and I mean that as the deepest compliment.
4. Tim McGraw, Let It Go. Rocks harder, has more to lose, and more to gain then most of the other albums this year—longing when it needs to be, rollicking when it wants to be, gorgeous and triumphant.
5. Teddy Thompson—Up Front and Down Low. A clutch of second generation singer songwriters is emerging to make music that is both historically informed, close to their family's, and if not radically separate, at least showing a new direction to folk and the like. Thompson's country covers album is respectful of the source and the history, with out making a museum piece. It is also infused with a deep melancholy, a heartbreak that reminds me of Tammy and George.
6. Songs of America, Various Artists—Everyone had their bitchings about who was included and who was excluded, and all of that is fair, but there is something miraculous in someone so safe and so close to power, having the bravery in making a collection of American folk songs that is so diverse, and so weird. For someone who is Canadian, who lives with the empire in our backyard, and who is terrified of anyone winning the presidency, it reminded me of why I love the culture of America, why I still listen to country music, no matter how reactionary, broken and exhausting the whole system is. (That said, it could do with more Aboriginal and Hispanic work)
7. Wagonmaster, Porter Wagoner. Just as batshit as you would expect from someone who spent the last 30 years collapsing into all kinds of personal, spiritual, and finical ruin.
8. We'll Never Look Back, Mavis Staples. I don't know if this is cheating, but everything that I expect from country, a belief in G-d, a belief in history, a wonder at love, is all here. So I am going to include it.
9. Big Dog Daddy, Toby Keith. The album this year I listened to, as pure aural pleasure. Nothing much significant, but his voice is like being enveloped in something warm and tight and v. v. safe—not quite the erotic frission I find in George Canyon or Josh Turner, a little rougher, a little less safe, but of the same taxonomical category.
10. Crazy Ex Girlfriend, Miranda Lambert.
Top Ten Country Singles:
1. Dancing for the Groceries, Kenny Chesney. Like Honky Tonk Badonadonk, a song that I thought was so unbelievably stupid and slightly misogynist, that it surprised me how quickly I found myself singing along. Also contains the amazing rhyme: "in sequins and in laces/shes dancing for the braces"
2. Corb Lund, Calvary. Two Book ended, the first about the glories of war, the second about the pain of death and disease, a double punch of sophisticated self correcting historical views, works even better because the first one, with its fife and snare drum sounds like it should come out of the civil war, and the second one with its slower pace, and mournful guitar, sounds like Vietnam era Neil Young
3. Drive By Truckers, Dress Blues. A memorial ode to a friend who died at 18, as a marine. From the beginning, with the intoning of he was 18, to the clarion calls towards mother and family, w/o the rhetoric of the state, makes it one of the more profound anti war anthems in recent memory (esp. the line American boys hate to lose/but you never planned in the bombs and the sand/or sleeping in yr dress blues)
4. Nickelback, Rockstar. Chesney is rocking out with Hagar in Mexico, and John Bon Jovi is on the country charts, and the demographic intermingling is fascinating—put a cowboy hat on when the hair falls out—with John Rich helping to write this and appearing in the video, an artifact of that change at its best. (and I'm shocked that I am writing this, because like all right thinking critics, I hate Nickelback---if I start saying nice things about Hinder next take me out behind the bar and shoot me.)
5. Taylor Swift, Tear Drops On My Guitar. Lovely, teenage rebellion recast as an overwritten ode to real time nostalgia, reminds one of the importance of not only music, but noise—does so with a crystalline voice and a purity ramping up to an eventual corruption.
6. Fionn O Reagon, Penny in the Slot I have no idea why I love this, its self conscious, twee, tourist Irish for the mercury prize crowd, the hipster version of green beer on St Patrick's day, but he can write, and he has a seductive lo-fi tenderness, and he makes you feel warm in the middle of December, and charmed in the middle of June, and charm is just this side of seduction.
7. Tim McGraw and Faith Hill, I Need You. I love any song of marital fidelity that makes being married sound self destructive and unavoidable, and this one, with its overwrought melodrama sure does that.
8. Josh Turner, Me and God. Fireworks was limp, and devoid of the sexual energy that he can obviously deliver—he is a singer that works better with monogamy than with fury. Like all good, soppy and over emotional southern Baptists, the only thing that trumps monogamy is an erotic attachment to the saviour—it's all here, a desire for discipline, attachment, to be broken and to be restored. A delicate and moving declaration of pure ego.
9. Reba and Kelly, Because of You. Kelly's career collapsed this year, and her album is shit, but this single, when she returns to Nashville's ever forgiving arms, makes me realize with the right studio magic, anything can be made to sound revelatory. I am on pins and needles for Jessica Simpson's attempt at this.
10. George Canyon, Good Ol Boys. A Nova Scotia boy takes the Dukes Of Hazard and make it sound as much part of the canon as Johnny Cash, George Jones or Kris Kristofferson, a profound joke on the self important heritage preservers.
Top Five Country Reissues:
1. Nick Drake Fruit Trees. Cause its good to have everything in one place, and because it reminded me of how his orchestral and acoustic mixing and matching made his weak lyrics and odd voice sound like a virtue.
2. The Stanley Brothers, Definitive Collection. Good enough to convince everyone that Bluegrass existed before G-d and will be the primary music of the millennium where Christ reigns in peace.
3. Graham Parsons, Live at the Avalon Ballroom. Try to forget all of that Califorian mysticism, and just listen. It's sublime, isn't it?
4. Neil Young, Live at the Massey Ball Room. Like Dylan at the Royal Albert Hall, but Canadian, so more modest and less conceptual. (Also the origin of some of the best songs of the last 25 years, its good to hear where myths begin sometimes.
5. Vashti Bunyan, Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind. She has a tiny, whispering voice, almost imperceptible, and often on these just found tapes, she had to be asked to speak up, the intimacy and the calmness that are found in that voice though, are a folk classic.>
1. Golden Opportunities, Okkervill River. Not the one that was traditionally released, but the one that was given free over the net—for a variety of reasons, because I think this is the way for finding patterns, for figuring out how new sounds function, because the only way to sink the pirates is to go into the sea, and because it's a great album. Aside from all the meta stuff about the net as delivery device, the aching vocals, the crystalline drumming, the wheezing harmonicas are uniquely them, which makes the claiming of a cover album an act of great self confidence.
2. Corb Lund, Horse Solider! Horse Solider! I think this album got me mostly, because of its deep moral ambiguity. In a world of convenience, pleasure and kowtowing, this album is unsure of where to fit in, and the deep discomfort about his relationship to G-d, to history, to war, and to the company of men, is profoundly discomforting. He knows what is wrong and what has ben wrong, but does to know how to fix it. Also, beautiful vocals, and a sense of dramatic irony and narrative construction that astonishes.
3. Taylor Swift, Taylor Swift. An 18 year old singing about how sad it feels to be 18, the Connie Francis of New Nashville, and I mean that as the deepest compliment.
4. Tim McGraw, Let It Go. Rocks harder, has more to lose, and more to gain then most of the other albums this year—longing when it needs to be, rollicking when it wants to be, gorgeous and triumphant.
5. Teddy Thompson—Up Front and Down Low. A clutch of second generation singer songwriters is emerging to make music that is both historically informed, close to their family's, and if not radically separate, at least showing a new direction to folk and the like. Thompson's country covers album is respectful of the source and the history, with out making a museum piece. It is also infused with a deep melancholy, a heartbreak that reminds me of Tammy and George.
6. Songs of America, Various Artists—Everyone had their bitchings about who was included and who was excluded, and all of that is fair, but there is something miraculous in someone so safe and so close to power, having the bravery in making a collection of American folk songs that is so diverse, and so weird. For someone who is Canadian, who lives with the empire in our backyard, and who is terrified of anyone winning the presidency, it reminded me of why I love the culture of America, why I still listen to country music, no matter how reactionary, broken and exhausting the whole system is. (That said, it could do with more Aboriginal and Hispanic work)
7. Wagonmaster, Porter Wagoner. Just as batshit as you would expect from someone who spent the last 30 years collapsing into all kinds of personal, spiritual, and finical ruin.
8. We'll Never Look Back, Mavis Staples. I don't know if this is cheating, but everything that I expect from country, a belief in G-d, a belief in history, a wonder at love, is all here. So I am going to include it.
9. Big Dog Daddy, Toby Keith. The album this year I listened to, as pure aural pleasure. Nothing much significant, but his voice is like being enveloped in something warm and tight and v. v. safe—not quite the erotic frission I find in George Canyon or Josh Turner, a little rougher, a little less safe, but of the same taxonomical category.
10. Crazy Ex Girlfriend, Miranda Lambert.
Top Ten Country Singles:
1. Dancing for the Groceries, Kenny Chesney. Like Honky Tonk Badonadonk, a song that I thought was so unbelievably stupid and slightly misogynist, that it surprised me how quickly I found myself singing along. Also contains the amazing rhyme: "in sequins and in laces/shes dancing for the braces"
2. Corb Lund, Calvary. Two Book ended, the first about the glories of war, the second about the pain of death and disease, a double punch of sophisticated self correcting historical views, works even better because the first one, with its fife and snare drum sounds like it should come out of the civil war, and the second one with its slower pace, and mournful guitar, sounds like Vietnam era Neil Young
3. Drive By Truckers, Dress Blues. A memorial ode to a friend who died at 18, as a marine. From the beginning, with the intoning of he was 18, to the clarion calls towards mother and family, w/o the rhetoric of the state, makes it one of the more profound anti war anthems in recent memory (esp. the line American boys hate to lose/but you never planned in the bombs and the sand/or sleeping in yr dress blues)
4. Nickelback, Rockstar. Chesney is rocking out with Hagar in Mexico, and John Bon Jovi is on the country charts, and the demographic intermingling is fascinating—put a cowboy hat on when the hair falls out—with John Rich helping to write this and appearing in the video, an artifact of that change at its best. (and I'm shocked that I am writing this, because like all right thinking critics, I hate Nickelback---if I start saying nice things about Hinder next take me out behind the bar and shoot me.)
5. Taylor Swift, Tear Drops On My Guitar. Lovely, teenage rebellion recast as an overwritten ode to real time nostalgia, reminds one of the importance of not only music, but noise—does so with a crystalline voice and a purity ramping up to an eventual corruption.
6. Fionn O Reagon, Penny in the Slot I have no idea why I love this, its self conscious, twee, tourist Irish for the mercury prize crowd, the hipster version of green beer on St Patrick's day, but he can write, and he has a seductive lo-fi tenderness, and he makes you feel warm in the middle of December, and charmed in the middle of June, and charm is just this side of seduction.
7. Tim McGraw and Faith Hill, I Need You. I love any song of marital fidelity that makes being married sound self destructive and unavoidable, and this one, with its overwrought melodrama sure does that.
8. Josh Turner, Me and God. Fireworks was limp, and devoid of the sexual energy that he can obviously deliver—he is a singer that works better with monogamy than with fury. Like all good, soppy and over emotional southern Baptists, the only thing that trumps monogamy is an erotic attachment to the saviour—it's all here, a desire for discipline, attachment, to be broken and to be restored. A delicate and moving declaration of pure ego.
9. Reba and Kelly, Because of You. Kelly's career collapsed this year, and her album is shit, but this single, when she returns to Nashville's ever forgiving arms, makes me realize with the right studio magic, anything can be made to sound revelatory. I am on pins and needles for Jessica Simpson's attempt at this.
10. George Canyon, Good Ol Boys. A Nova Scotia boy takes the Dukes Of Hazard and make it sound as much part of the canon as Johnny Cash, George Jones or Kris Kristofferson, a profound joke on the self important heritage preservers.
Top Five Country Reissues:
1. Nick Drake Fruit Trees. Cause its good to have everything in one place, and because it reminded me of how his orchestral and acoustic mixing and matching made his weak lyrics and odd voice sound like a virtue.
2. The Stanley Brothers, Definitive Collection. Good enough to convince everyone that Bluegrass existed before G-d and will be the primary music of the millennium where Christ reigns in peace.
3. Graham Parsons, Live at the Avalon Ballroom. Try to forget all of that Califorian mysticism, and just listen. It's sublime, isn't it?
4. Neil Young, Live at the Massey Ball Room. Like Dylan at the Royal Albert Hall, but Canadian, so more modest and less conceptual. (Also the origin of some of the best songs of the last 25 years, its good to hear where myths begin sometimes.
5. Vashti Bunyan, Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind. She has a tiny, whispering voice, almost imperceptible, and often on these just found tapes, she had to be asked to speak up, the intimacy and the calmness that are found in that voice though, are a folk classic.>
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