Putting a Boot in Nashville's A-s-- It's the American Way (2002's Top 10 Country Albums) Dec 30 '02    Write an essay on this topic. Tweet Popular Products in Music Revelation [Digipak] by Journey From $12 Machine Gun Etiquette by The Damned From $40 The Bottom Line The credibility vortex that is Nashville continues to suck. Hard. And this year, the major labels started dragging their teeth. A quick memo to the producers and the label CEOs in Nashville: I know you're trying to gain some artistic credibility post-O Brother, but simply adding a banjo riff to the bridge of a Carolyn Dawn Johnson single doesn't make her any more authentically "country," so just stop it. You're embarrassing yourselves and you're giving me a migraine. Thank you. Mainstream country took a hard turn to the right, both politically and musically, in 2002. In the aftermath of the unprecedented success of the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack and the interest it spawned in "traditional" country music, most mainstream acts attempted to show their deep connections to Hank Williams and to boost their street cred by adding some sparse dobro, banjo, mandolin, and steel guitar instrumentation to their pop-country. It was a gutsy move by the mainstream-- if country is the most conservative of popular genres, bluegrass occupies a sizable chunk of its lunatic fringe-- and something of a surprise, since it would've been easier simply to up the schmaltz level, making pop-country even more indistinguishable from outright pop. Whether or not this tactic worked is debatable, seeing as how country is the only genre of popular music to show actual sales growth in 2002. That said, both Faith Hill and Shania Twain, two of country's top-sellers this year, made concerted efforts to appeal to a more VH-1 demo by lacquering on even more pop sheen and by going the "I've never been simply a country artist" pants-on-fire route. Twain, thus far, has pulled off this transition, while Hill's career path is now even less clear than it was after Breathe. Tim McGraw, Nashville's most undeservedly successful male artist, offered an album with an indefensible cover of Elton John's Tiny Dancer, proving that he is, in fact, every bit as clueless as he lets on. The Dixie Chicks, the top-selling country act of the year, dropped an album that was essentially a neo-bluegrass kiss-off to the Nashville establishment that had royally screwed them over. And apparently Alan Jackson is now the Poet Laureate. Then, of course, there's Toby Keith, who took what little artistic mettle he had (unlike 9 out of 10 "Male Vocalists" in Nashville, Keith can at least hold a pitch when performing live) and thoroughly beat it into a bloody pulp with a morally repulsive little nugget of swinging-dick patriotism that sounded like the whole world rainin' down on sanity and good taste. So, for yet another year, finding the best country music means looking beyond the offerings of Nashville-- of the 10 albums on my list, only the aforementioned Dixie Chicks' album is from a major label in Nashville. But, not only are these 10 albums worthy successors to the O Brother phenomenon, they're also worthy successors to the actual country music of Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, and Merle Haggard. At their best, these albums stand as legitimate artistic statements alongside 2002's best pop/rock/hip-hop albums from The Flaming Lips, Beck, Me'Shell Ndegeocello, and Wilco. But before I get to the list, there's a bit more Year-in-Review business to attend to: 2002's Biggest Alt-Country Disappointments: This is my "Just Because Most People Have Never Heard It, That Doesn't Mean I Automatically Think it's Good" defense. -Ryan Adams, Demolition. He pared down five albums' worth of demos to make this album. One would think that he had written more than 4 good songs. Sadly, no. -Kim Richey, Rise. Richey's crystalline soprano has always been her ace-in-the-hole, while her hyperliterate, mature songwriting was her focus. Here, some lovely vocal arrangements fail to mask her first album of weak material. -Dolly Parton, Halos and Horns. Just when her late-career revival started to rival Jack Nicholson's, and she'd almost left the corn-pone of those Kenny Rogers duets behind, Dolly breaks out a cover of Stairway to Heaven. -Johnny Cash, American IV. The bottom finally fell out of this series of concept albums. The first still stands as arguably the best country album of the past decade, but listening to The Man in Black wheeze through a cover of Personal Jesus is just flat-out painful. A Couple of Mainstream Shout-Outs: My appeal to a couple of artists I'd like to be better than they are now. -Keith Urban. From a purely technical standpoint, he's probably the best musician signed to a major label in Nashville. Now he just needs better material to back that up. -Lee Ann Womack. You sold out, and you paid for it. Leave the cloying human-uplift ballads to Martina McBride, and give your first two albums another listen. Re-Issue of the Year: -Emmylou Harris, Roses in the Snow. Emmylou's classic bluegrass album. Do I really need to elaborate on why that's something worth celebrating? And The Honorable Mentions: Ya done good, kids. But you didn't quite make the cut. Better luck next time out. -Solomon Burke, Don't Give Up On Me. Anyone who thought Justin Timberlake's Justified was the "soul" album of the year (People magazine, I'm lookin' at you...) is deaf. King Solomon still reigns. -Patty Griffin, 1000 Kisses. Folk-rock's Aimee Mann, Griffin emerged from record-label limbo in gorgeous form. -Drive-By Truckers, Southern Rock Opera. The hard-rocking testament to the Southern working-class that Kid Rock keeps thinking (erroneously) that he's going to record. And Finally, He Gets On-Topic: Right-oh. Even if you "hate country music," I guarantee that you'd be able to find at least one album on this list that you'd enjoy. The more musically adventurous should check out all ten, because they're just that good. 10). Home, The Dixie Chicks. It's flawed and wildly uneven, but Home is also the most daring album to come from a major label in Nashville this year. Buoyed by one of the year's best singles from any genre of music, Long Time Gone, Home represents a welcome return from a rare act with the undeniable talent to back up their commercial success. The comparisons to the Spice Girls that plagued The Dixie Chicks earlier in their career were never apt in the first place, but Home, a sincere attempt at making a more "mature" album, should definitively put to rest any lingering doubts as to the group's pure talent. Rating: *** out of *****. 09). Lovesick, Broke, and Driftin', Hank III. Critics of Hank Williams III's debut album often dismissed him as little more than a novelty, shamelessly aping his late grandfather's style, with his hardline-traditional country production and the pained breaks in his vocals. On his sophomore set, Hank III answers those critics by sounding even more eerily like his grandfather-- this time out, he just about nailed the innate sadness at the core of Hank Williams' music. That Hank III also performs as a hardcore punk band is, admittedly, still a novelty, but this year you'd be hard-pressed to find a more perfectly crafted traditional country song than this album's centerpiece, Five Shots of Whiskey. ****/*****. 08). Bramble Rose, Tift Merritt. 2002 offered an unusually large number of solid debut albums, and the first effort from North Carolina's Merritt easily ranks alongside the debuts of Norah Jones, The Hives, and Res. Bramble Rose, for its consistently top-notch songwriting, positions Merritt as the "new" Kim Richey. And, like Richey, Tift Merritt is blessed with a beautiful voice with which to perform her songs. If Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt somehow had a daughter, she'd sound just like Tift Merritt. Rating: ****/*****. 07). Miss Fortune, Allison Moorer. And now, apparently, she is Shelby Lynne. What with her older sister's complete loss of direction (see my review of Love, Shelby for the sad details), the unique blend of country and blue-eyed soul that Moorer offers on Miss Fortune really does sound more like the logical follow-up to I am Shelby Lynne, rather than to her own The Hardest Part. While her sophomore album was a flat-out brilliant concept album, the focus on Miss Fortune is Moorer's incomparable vocal technique. I honestly didn't think she had much room to improve her already superior vocals, but on this album Allison Moorer officially surpasses every other singer recording today-- and, astonishingly, she recorded the album without using any electronic vocal compression or pitch correction. The songwriting, unfortunately, is a bit lacking in places, but Moorer's voice smoothes-over the rough spots. The gauntlet has been lain down for Trisha Yearwood's next album... Rating: ****/*****. 06). Easy, Kelly Willis. The "Queen of Alternative Country" returns from maternity leave with her most consistent, most confident album to date. Even on her cutting songs of heartbreak, there's an undeniable joy that runs throughout Easy, and it seems as though Willis, a critics' darling since her major-label debut a decade ago, is finally comfortable with her craft. Although Easy lacks both the urgency and the riskiness of 1999's What I Deserve, it's easily a more complete, organic album. Written largely by Willis and her husband, singer-songwriter Bruce Robison, there's not a weak cut to be found. And her delivery of Robison's devastating What Did You Think is a career-best for Willis. Rating: ****/*****. 05). This Side, Nickel Creek. Anyone who doubts my claim that bluegrass is the most radical sect of popular music's most conservative genre should try mentioning this band of three California-bred twentysomethings to a true bluegrass purist. What's sad about the backlash against Nickel Creek is that, just because the band does a (brilliant, earnest) cover of Pavement's Spit on a Stranger, there are people who are flatly refusing to listen to some of the most compelling, most technically-superior music being recorded in any genre today. The sophistication in the musical arrangements Nickel Creek and producer Alison Krauss offer on This Side make their brand of neo-bluegrass sound, of all things, classy. Mandolinist / vocalist / pin-up Chris Thile and multi-instrumentalist / vocalist siblings Sean and Sarah Watkins, in terms of pure technical skill, put to shame every other band I can think of off-hand. And they did so on their 2000 self-titled debut. What's so encouraging about This Side is the surprising degree of growth they've shown as songwriters. This Side officially positions Nickel Creek as one of the acts to watch over the course of the next decade. They're going to be that important. Rating: ****/*****. 04). Once We Were Trees, Beachwood Sparks. Skewing farther towards the "alt" end of the alt-country spectrum, Beachwood Sparks' Once We Were Trees is a throwback to the power-pop of, all of people, The Lovin' Spoonful-- but with some amazing pedal-steel work mixed in for good measure. They're undeniably gimmick-driven-- according to Spin magazine, you can be a fan of either Beachwood Sparks or bathing, but not both. I disagree.-- but Once We Were Trees retains enough indie-rock roughness, in addition to some simply outstanding writing, that Beachwood Sparks isn't overwhelmed by its retro aspirations. That, and their cover of Sade's By Your Side makes Travis and Coldplay sound cynical and bitter. Rating: ****/*****. 03). Barricades and Brickwalls, Kasey Chambers. I admittedly came late to the party on Kasey Chambers' sterling 2000 debut, The Captain, but only because my favorite local music store was consistently sold out of it. For her sophomore effort, though, I was ready. And Barricades and Brickwalls is an even better follow-up album than it needed to be to justify Chambers' position as Lucinda Williams' favorite new artist. From the bluesy title-track to the deceptively simple Not Pretty Enough, Chambers asserts herself as nothing short of Lucinda Williams' heir apparent. There's not an extraneous word anywhere in her songs; she gets right to the point, and, at her best, she cuts deep. Chambers is a fine, fine singer, as well. She has the rare ability-- like Kelly Willis and Allison Moorer-- to convey multiple emotions simultaneously. When she sings, "And I'll be d@mned if you're not my man/ Before the sun goes down" on the album's title track, for instance, she gives the line both a sense of desperation and a genuine menace. It's the best song of its kind since Patsy went out Walkin' After Midnight. Rating: ****/*****. 02). Now Again, The Flatlanders. It would qualify as country's "comeback" of the year-- that is, if Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Joe Ely, and Butch Hancock hadn't individually been recording brilliant albums since The Flatlanders took an extended vacation from each other. Now Again, which reunites the trio of spectacular singer-songwriters, was both long-overdue and well worth the wait. One of the year's most pleasant surprises at country radio has to be Don Imus' dare to pay $10K to any country radio programming director who put this album's first single, All You Are Love, into heavy rotation. The song never came close to hitting the Top 40, but a handful of stations called Imus' bluff. Now Again is an album of such refreshing depth, though, that he could've chosen any of its fourteen tracks and come up with a winner. The Flatlanders would qualify as a "supergroup" if the band hadn't pre-dated the individual success of its members-- and, unlike most "supergroup" recordings, Now Again is truly a collaborative effort (unlike, for instance, The New Pornographers' also-brilliant Mass Romantic, which works as a sum-of-its-parts effort) in which the contributions of Gilmore, Hancock, and Ely blend together flawlessly. Rating: ****/*****. 01). Blacklisted, Neko Case. I've compared her brilliant Y2K sophomore album, Furnace Room Lullaby (incidentally, my #1 country album for that year, as well) to PJ Harvey's magnum opus, To Bring You My Love, but that's a comparison I'm going to have to revise. It's on Blacklisted that Case fully captures the same brand of nihilism at the core of To Bring You My Love. Blacklisted works because of its subtlety, whereas Furnace Room Lullaby occasionally relied on Case's ability to belt out a song. Here, her vocals are more restrained; there's both an intelligence and a moral weight borne in her phrasing throughout the album. Allison Moorer may be a better overall song interpreter in a traditional sense, but not even she can cover terrain as dark as where Case goes on Blacklisted. That's most apparent in the album's two cover songs, a chilling take on Ketty Lester's Look for Me (I'll be Around) and a jaw-dropping, fatalistic reinterpretation of Aretha Franklin's Runnin' Out of Fools. Neko Case's voice is the best thing to happen to country music in a long, long time. And on originals like Deep Red Bells and Pretty Girls, she's fully arrived as country music's most important new songwriter. Just three albums into her career, Neko Case has cemented her position as the most important artist in country music. Blacklisted isn't part of the neo-traditionalism movement of 2002, nor is it as "alt" as her previous two albums. It's an entirely different animal, and it's simply brilliant. Rating: *****/*****. So, there we go. The music of 2002-- a marked improvement over the general lame-ness offered in 2001-- is similar to its films: there's really no shortage of great work worth seeking out, but only a select few works are truly exceptional. Unfortunately, quite a bit of this music never finds an audience; this is my (admittedly futile, long-winded) attempt to rectify that.

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