I got this album a while ago, and I sort of half listened to it, liked it well enough to keep it but not well enough to write about it. But the big commercial country stations here in Edmonton have been playing the hell out of the first couple of singles, and the singles are good. Plus, he's a west coast boy who is working the indie/major label two step, plus this is a sophomore album that improves on the first one, which is rare enough. He also has some fairly major talents—as a writer more then a performer (constructing narratives, creator of homespun two line aphorisms, and tight little repeater choruses.) If/when Nashville picks him up; it will be in the same way that Los Angeles picked up Chantal Kreviazuk.
All of that sounds like the beginning of a pretty middling review, and the list of adjectives that come to mind, share that feeling—he is clever, pleasant, amusing, slick, and handsome. All of those sound like half compliments, like I am struggling to find nice things to say about the album, to find a reason to recommend it to listeners who will not buy country unless it trades on historicism or authenticity. But a pop sensibility, and a willingness to treat the intermingling of musical genres is authentic. The last rodeo I went to, was the College Finals—they played booty-shaking rap, Texas swing, Metal, Pop Country, and Johnny Cash.
The best of this kind of instinct means you get people like Willie Nelson, who used to get the rednecks and hippies together on his farm for the annual Fourth of July picnic, and who liked weed as much as he liked whiskey. I mention the Rodeo, and Nelson here for a couple of reasons. The first sounds on the album are a scratchy loud speaker talking about rodeo bulls and the Cariboo up in BC. It begins as a country album, but then, at least lyrically expands. There are the usual heart break ballads (the delicate and lovely Cry, and the languid, tour weary Arlington) and little nuggets of nostalgia, the post Kenny Chesney anthems to faded lust (Faded Red Hoodie, which is much better then anything on Poets and Pirates) but there are also songs about the tragedy of current government policy on grass (Bobby and Suzanne), and a fantastic song about what happens when musical collections collide.
Called Nine Inch Nails, and available on his myspace page, it is about what happens when a rock chick and a country boy sort out records after a nasty break up. It is great fun, with some amazing lines, including "Well she moved to Montreal/ eventually Don't They All/she's in a band that covers WolfMother/I Think they call themselves Wolflover/I'm listening to Hells Bells and wishing it was Bob Wells". That line, sung to a hard swing, says more about what people listen to, and how they listen to. It also features a nice dig at hipsters. (Plus, listening to it on the CD, reading the lyrics sheet, I realize he has gotten a non-judgmental and casual reference to cocaine use on national country radio, which is kind of awesome.)
I only wish it sounded like he listened to WolfMother, AC/DC, Tool—I think that he is not quite sure about what exactly he wants. Does he want to be an alt-country hell raiser in favor of drugs and rock and roll. Does he want to be a new traditionalist, who prefers whiskey to coke, or a rodeo king, now retired? That the last song is a 9 minute ode to his grandfather the sheep farmer, who ended up getting scalped by the Apaches, jarring and bizarre, suggests that not only does he want all of the above, he is comfortable with confusing and distracting an audience who came for one thing and got everything else, an the commercial instincts do not invalidate that. Rarely does an album make me feel this ambiguous, I think I like it as a text, but I am sure that I admire its slipperiness, and making all of those not really compliment words be genuine. His ambition should be rewarded.
