Alt-country fans rejoice! Here’s an album so good, and so under-the-bubble, that I’m breaking my no-majors rule for it.
Hayes Carll’s first, independently released albums (available on eMusic) were extraordinary works that somehow missed the Ryan Adams/Sun Volt crowd, but got enough attention that Mr. Carll has been bought up by Lost Highway (yes, the label that believes bloggers belong in jail). It’s not a surprise, because his last release, “Little Rock,†hit #1 on a Billboard’s Americana Chart. And the Texas troubador’s first release with a big budget hasn’t weakened his skills. But has enabled him to play with some of his heroes. Studio work on “Trouble in Mind†included sessions with Dan Baird, Will Kimbrough, and Al Perkins of The Flying Burrito Brothers.
Musically, Carll’s a lot closer to Bob Dylan than any recognizable country star. “A Lover Like You†is vintage “Highway 61†era Dylan, right down to the nasal drawl. In fact, do you remember Bob Dylan’s country album? If it had been a great record (instead a good half-record), it might have sounded something like “Trouble in Mind.” But he can do Waylon, too, like on “Drunken Poet’s Dream,†with its refrain: “I’m gonna holler/I’m gonna scream/I’m gonna get me some mescaline.†He also can seamless interweave obscure songs with deep literary references to Faulkner between love songs like “Willing to Love Again†and the more traditional Country tune, “She Left Me For Jesus†(“She’s left me for Jesus, and that just ain’t fair/She says that he’s perfect, how can I compare?â€)
It takes a lot for me to pay homage to a guy who is on a label like Lost Highway, who should never be
forgiven or forgotten for having two bloggers thrown in jail(!) for leaking advance Ryan Adams tracks. (I’m not going to get into a detailed discussion of this, but for new readers I’ll explain: It happened. I don’t condone leaks, and I don’t post them, but I also think jailtime was far too extreme a remedy.) So for me to pen this post, you know it’s got to be good stuff.
Live Hayes from the new album:
Old live Hayes:
Morrissey Falls in Love at First Sight
Live Hayes covers!
I don’t Wanna Grow Up (Tom Waits)
Probably the only artist covered by more indies than Bob Dylan is Neil Young. Why do we love folks with such horrendously bad singing voices? Dunno the answer to that. But I do know that for the next few days, I’ll be doing a Neil Young cover extravaganza, A to Z. At the very end, there will be a zip file, so if you can wait for that, it will help you avoid all the savefile stuff. Most of the songs will be in the zip. If I miss some, I’ll return your money.
Let’s get it on!
A is for Alejandro Escovedo’s versions of Like a Hurricane and Powderfinger (in the zip file).
B is for Bad Fog of Loneliness-Matthew Barber.
B is also for Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere-Matthew Sweet and Susannah Hoffs (former Bangle), which you’ll find in the zip file.
C is for this post right here! It’s also for Powderfinger (live)-Counting Crows
D is for Dana Carvey’s Neil Young imitation. Highly recommended.
E is for Expecting to Fly-Emily Haines. You gotta dig Emily. She’s the fifth greatest woman in indie rock, after all.
F is for freedom! Rockin’ In the Free World (live)-Pearl Jam. PJ are the indie-friendliest major-label rock band in the world, now that Jerry Garcia is dead. God bless them.
F is also For The Turnstiles (of course). There’s a cool version by the vastly underrated experimental band Califone in the zip file. Promise!
1. Cinnamon Girl-Smashing Pumpkins (live). A nasal growl is covered by a nasal snarl.
2. Cinnamon Girl-Mark Lanegan (live)
3. Cinnamon Girl-Backyard Tire Fire. A great underground alt-country rock band.
4. Cinnamon Girl-Brian Polenazi
7. Cinnamon Girl-Dream Syndicate
8. Cinnamon Girl-Toad the Wet Sprocket. What the hell ever happened to these dudes?
No, they ain’t indie no more. But they still have the indie sound. And I have a real weakness for this band. Z is one of my favorite albums of the last 10 years.
Paris Falls are a Houston-based husband-and-wife team who have self-released two CD volumes of their own compositions (available for cheap at their myspace page). They show remarkable range, from catchy pop (“Walk Away”) to edgier jam-rock (“Shallow”), and much in between. Even the “Untitled†instrumental from Volume 2 is good. Rock instrumentals always run a risk of being boring or sounding like talk-over beds, but this one hits the right balance between mellow-mood-maker and independent composition. Almost
all of it has a classic-rock feel, and shows great potential for growth. Check ‘em out.
Their first album was one of the great pop/rock albums in recent history. Their second . . . Not so much. Because they asked to be taken seriously, there, as songwriters. (An acoustic song about a junkie uncle? From the authors of the lyric “You had a boyfriend who looked a girlfriend that I had in February of last year”?) Still, I dig the band a whole lot. So here’s some covers. (And remixes.)
1. Read My Mind (Pet Shop Boys’ Stars Are Blazing Mix)-The Killers
3. When You Were Young-Astrid Swan
4. When You Were Young (Jacques lu Conts Thin White Duke remix edit)-Killers
5. Digital Killers (Daft Punk remix)-Loo & Placido
6. Somebody Told Me-Daniel Bedingfield (live)
7. Mr. Brightside-This Unique Museum
8. Mr. Brightside-PlayRadioPlay!
9. All These Things That I’ve Done-Matt Willis (live)
10. Mr. Brightside-Amy McDonald (live)
And thanks to Fong Songs for being the source of a few of the above tunes.
A pretty nifty dub/ska album, with traces of Fatboy Slim. This is the kind of genre that I don’t really need to write about–it is what it is. Check out the two mp3s below, because if you like those, you’ll like the whole album. Dub and reggae are music that, as Joe Strummer once said, consists of a bunch of melodies that are just lying around for someone to pick up. This is a good example of it. I dig it, and you should, too.
For fans of: Bedouin Soundclash; The Clash; The Specials.
