As Good As It Once Was?-- 2k5’s Top 10 Country Albums (And Singles)
Jan 30 '06
The Bottom Line The Bottom Line: So you treat The Bottom Line like a firefly, like it only gets to shine for a little while.
Fallout, both in its magnitude and its direction, is hard to predict. Whether or not one feels that he deserved it, many people, at the end of 2004, would not have guessed that the ol’ Commander in Chief would see his approval ratings take the sizable hit that they’ve taken in 2005, let alone have dreamed that the “i” word would be whispered in his general direction. But for Green Day’s American Idiot, the music industry certainly gave no compelling reason, in either 2004 or 2005, to expect that the dissenters’ voices would suddenly become more difficult to shout down.
Reveling in its status as popular music’s most conservative genre, the country music industry, by and large, continued to court “heartland” “values” in 2005. Gretchen Wilson’s woman-hating debut album sold well throughout the year, and her slightly less antediluvian (and, perhaps relatedly, slightly less well-received) follow-up, All Jacked Up, included a duet with Merle Haggard called “Politically Uncorrect,” which tips its ignorant hand in its very title but still manages to surprise for the pride it takes in its aggressive anti-intellectualism. Darryl Worley dropped awkward references to the Iraq war into two of his singles for the simple reason that he figured, correctly, that doing so would get those singles played on the radio. The handlers for the Faith Hill model Teddy Ruxpin who won the last American Idol throw-down made the year’s most shrewd marketing decision, realizing that country radio would lose its collective sh!t over a song with “Jesus” in the title, no matter how cloying or balls-out stupid that song might be. Closet Democrat Toby Keith dropped a few more hit songs (indeed, “As Good As I Was Once” spent a career-best six weeks at #1) that reduce to schoolyard boasts about dick-size. And perhaps most tellingly, the Academy of Country Music celebrated its fortieth anniversary with an awards concert in which they gave special recognition to the artists who have won three ACM awards, including Entertainer of the Year, during a single year. Of the fifteen acts to have pulled this off, fourteen were invited to the ceremony: nearly four years after Natalie Maines’ comments about Dubya, The Dixie Chicks were the only eligible artists the Academy of Country Music declined to recognize.
But, again, fallout is tricky. While overall music sales showed a troubling decline in 2005-- as much as 3%, according to certain sources-- country was the only popular genre to show significant growth in sales last year. What accounts for the genre’s continued commercial growth, then, is that, despite the callow patriot act of the Nashville establishment, even major-label country music in 2005 demonstrated an output that was remarkable both for its diversity and its quality.
Looking at the cash-cow of their Horse of a Different Color, I predicted that Big & Rich would beget a host of interchangeable sound-alike acts who would come to dominate the country mainstream. What actually followed their triple-platinum debut album-- other than a less offensive and less interesting sophomore album, that is-- were just two would-be clones, one of whom, Little Big Town, actually dropped a great single and the other of whom, Hot Apple Pie, came and went without making much of an impact at all. What Big & Rich actually accomplished, then, was that they made it possible and even profitable for an artist who isn’t just another George Strait or Reba McIntire clone to land a major label recording deal in Nashville. That hasn’t happened in well over a decade, back when Kelly Willis and BR5-49 shared roster space with Lorrie Morgan and Alabama, and it made 2005 an exceptionally exciting time for people who care about the status of country music. There were still more than a few causes for concern-- the sustained popularity of both Wilson and Kenny Chesney, to pick the most egregious-- but, while many have decried 2005 as a terrible year for music overall, it would be impossible to support such a claim about the year in country.
Put another way, 2005 was the first year since I’ve been old enough to gripe about how far country music has devolved that I could’ve culled my list of the top 10 country albums entirely from the releases of major label and recognizable name stars without feeling the least bit guilty about it.
Not that I’m going to do that. I could have, but Brad Paisley sells plenty big without my further endorsement beyond what I’ve given him at Slant, and, good as Trisha Yearwood's Jasper County and Gary Allan’s Tough All Over are, I’d be lying if I said they were “better” than some lower profile alt-country releases.
And, going back to the swing of the political pendulum in 2005, it’s just not nice to lie.
2005’s Top 10 Country Albums
10). Mary Gauthier, Mercy Now. Lost Highway. ****.
For her chronic head-cold vocal style and her raw, brutally honest lyrics, Mary Gauthier has, since her 1997 debut, drawn favorable comparisons to Lucinda Williams. While such comparisons still apply to Mercy Now, the growth Gauthier demonstrates in her already strong songwriting actually makes Townes Van Zandt perhaps a better point of reference than Williams. The key difference between the two is that Williams’ narratives are often from a first-person voice, whereas Van Zandt’s songs are no less shrewdly observed third-person character sketches. Gauthier impresses because she can write so poetically in either form: the bulk of Mercy Now uses distinct narrators to give voice to her stunning, often bleak observations, but the album’s two standouts, the title track and “I Drink,” hold their own in the company of Williams’ best confessionals. With its spare, minor-key production as a perfect compliment to Gauthier’s wise, world-weary tales, Mercy Now stands as one of music’s rare examples of American Gothic.
09). Clem Snide, End of Love. Spin Art. ****.
Eef Barzelay’s It’s the Apocalypse, Charlie Brown! musings made a fun first impression back in the Spring. Twenty-seven named tropical systems later and, well, they’re still funny, but the humor is tempered by the prayer that the lunatic fringe doesn’t have this one pinned down. Full review.
07). Nickel Creek, Why Should the Fire Die? Sugar Hill. // The Duhks. Sugar Hill. ****.
Nugrass wunderkinds Nickel Creek make a clean break from the classy, if somewhat restrained form that producer and erstwhile nugrass wunderkind herself Alison Krauss brought to their first two albums and, in teaming with Good Charlotte and Queens of the Stone Age producer Eric Valentine, come up with an album that’s at turns stirring and diverse, but which sounds like an album that’s destined to be recontextualized as a “transition” record. In the moment, though, the propulsive “When In Rome” and the old-timey “Anthony” sure are plenty great, and there isn’t a band recording in any genre who can match Nickel Creek’s technical chops. Newcomers The Duhks give it a game effort, though, on their self-titled debut. While Nickel Creek infuse their brand of bluegrass with modern pop and even emo styles, The Duhks borrow rhythmic structures and some of singer Jessica Havey’s killer growls, especially on the brilliant “Four Blue Walls,” from vintage blues and the adventurous melodies of Celtic music. A few albums on, Nickel Creek and The Duhks could position themselves as the Radiohead and Wilco of country music: so early in their careers, they’ve shown the same kind of willingness to experiment with genre and, just as importantly, they’re both just that good.
06). George Jones, Hits I Missed... And One I Didn’t. Bandit. ****.
The Possum stakes his claim for the late-career renaissance movement that has already welcomed Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, and Bobby Bare with an interesting gimmick on Hits I Missed... And One I Didn’t. If it isn’t the immediate landmark artistic statement that Cash’s American Recordings or Lynn’s Van Lear Rose were, it’s nonetheless an album that warrants the kind of serious respect that Jones has squandered on novelty singles like “High Tech Redneck” for nearly two decades now. By recording an album of songs that, when they were first brought to him, he chose not to record, only to have those songs go on to become top 10 hits for other artists, Jones could have easily turned Hits I Missed into a game of one-upsmanship. Instead, Jones stays fairly true to the original arrangements-- unlike what Bettye LaVette accomplished on I’ve Got My Own Hell to Raise, Jones’ versions of the songs are still recognizable from their previous forms-- which puts the focus on his vocals. And, while the years have added greater texture to Jones’ voice, his status as country music’s premier male interpretive singer is entirely undiminished. Nowhere is that more apparent than on the hit that he didn’t miss, a re-recorded version of his legendary single, “He Stopped Loving Her Today.” The fact that every country ballad that’s been recorded since has tried to match it has given the song an unfortunate camp appeal, but Jones’ new, more nuanced vocal revitalizes a song that’s central to the genre’s canon. Undeniably great as his versions of others’ hit songs are, it’s the one he first hit himself that makes the collection essential.
05). Rodney Crowell, The Outsider. Columbia. **** ½.
The only real problem with Rodney Crowell’s The Outsider, his third straight album to stake a claim as a career-best, is its title. It’s just hard to view the man who wrote one of the year’s longest-running #1 singles-- Keith Urban’s “Making Memories of Us”-- as an “outsider” in the country mainstream, even if he’s open with both his political views on songs like “The Obscenity Prayer” and “Don’t’ Get Me Started” and his highbrow intellectual leanings on “Dancing Circles Around the Sun (Epictetus Speaks).” Whether or not Crowell’s would-be outsider art can be taken at face value, The Outsider still stands as the year’s feistiest country album, with Crowell raging against machines with the passion and insight of Johnny Cash and Gram Parsons. With its lively electric guitars and brash, confrontational tone, The Outsider actually stands with at least one foot in the territory occupied by mainstream country’s current trends, even as its content voices Crowell’s articulate dissent.
04). Dwight Yoakam, Blame the Vain. New West. **** ½.
Even if it did call his judgment into question, his cameo in the vile Wedding Crashers wasn’t much cause for any lasting concern: Dwight Yoakam, fully two decades into his career, has never released a bad album, so there was no reason to suspect that Blame the Vain would break that streak. In fact, his records consistently rate within varying degrees of any given year’s most essential country albums. Even by that standard, Blame the Vain is a standout, an album that finds Yoakam acting as his own producer for the first time and attempting to fix a style that was anything but broken. His combination of Buck Owens style Bakersfield and hardline traditional country sounds has become his trademark. As he did on Gone, Yoakam brings in several new sources of inspiration with a skill that, at this point, isn’t the least bit surprising. When he busts out a wicked 70’s glam introduction to “She’ll Remember,” then, it somehow sounds like a logical evolution for Yoakam. Even as he’s built a respectable acting career, Yoakam remains country music’s most reliable go-to guy, and Blame the Vain is easily his best work in a decade.
03). Outlaw Family Band. Slack-Jaw Records. **** ½.
One of the most disappointing aspects of modern country music is that it’s just so bloodless, ignoring the messiness of the genre’s past-- “Ode to Billie Joe,” Johnny Cash’s shooting a man in Reno, Loretta Lynn’s beating the sh!t out of a whole mess of women-- so as not to offend its middlebrow target demographic. That’s one of the many things I love about Neko Case and Hank III: when things go wrong in their songs, well, sometimes people die. From ill-fated hotel employees to abusive husbands and cheating girlfriends, it’s hard to keep track of the body-count on the self-titled debut from Outlaw Family Band. What keeps the massive bloodletting from reducing to a simple stunt performance-- this isn’t music’s equivalent to Hostel-- is that death is always presented as either the natural consequence of misfortune or of a narrator’s skewed logic. Even on the brilliantly executed political satire “WWIII,” violence is couched as somehow inevitable, and that idea gives Outlaw Family Band a stark undercurrent of nihilism, like Case’s Blacklisted, that’s hard to shake and that impresses for its fearlessness and its commitment to a sense of realism that’s challenging and confrontational in the way that the best country music always is. That Outlaw Family Band, produced by former Wilco member Jay Bennett, are truly first-rate traditional musicians who make use of their instruments in decidedly non-traditional ways-- the banjo-riff-as-rhythm-section on “Caroline,” for instance, is the kind of structure that Big & Rich mistakenly think they’re pulling off-- only make their long-term prospects that much more exciting. Over the course of a mere nine tracks-- my only quibble with the album, really, is that it doesn’t include the song “WWJD,” which I’d discovered online a few months before Andrew kindly hooked me up with the band properly-- Outlaw Family Band make one hell of a first impression and immediately land on the short-list of honest-to-God bands who promise to keep the genre interesting for a good long while.
02). Miranda Lambert, Kerosene. Epic. **** ½.
However suspect her path to stardom may be is made immediately irrelevant by the fact that the end-product establishes Lambert as the most remarkable talent a major label in Nashville has produced thus far this millennium. She just gets country music-- the songwriting, the production, the delivery, the whole package-- in a way that so few country stars do anymore. I know that there’s nothing that strains critical credibility like hyperbole. Well, forget my objectivity, Miranda’s soakin’ it in kerosene, and of course it took her literally lighting the stage of the Country Music Association awards on fire to get her the attention she deserves. Full review.
01). Son Volt, Okemah & The Melody of Riot. Transmit Sounds / Legacy. **** ½.
They’ve been regarded as the lesser half of the Uncle Tupelo split that also spawned Wilco, and that pressure eventually forced Son Volt frontman Jay Farrar to dismantle the band after a decade of middling-quality albums, a lukewarmly received solo career, and an aimless, meandering sense of artistic direction. Reformed with a new lineup and clearly refocused in purpose, Farrar and the current incarnation of Son Volt did something that many wouldn’t have thought possible: they’ve trumped Wilco. As a testament to the fiercely political folk music of Woody Guthrie, whose birthplace gives rise to the first half of the album’s title, Okemah & The Melody of Riot is an even richer album, a greater success of content and form than were Wilco’s two excellent Mermaid Avenue collaborations with Billy Bragg. A dynamic rock album on first impression, Okemah emerges on repeated listens as the testament to the voice of the red-state dissenters, sharp in political and intellectual awareness but inseparable from a social context that resents the politically and intellectually aware and feeling all the more guilty and ashamed because of it. It’s the record that The Drive-By Truckers have always threatened to release but have never managed to sustain for the course of a full album without catering somewhat to an audience of outsiders. Farrar’s statements on Okemah and the Melody of Riot are many things, but they’re certainly not compromised, which leaves Guthrie’s legacy in capable, confident hands.
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Farther Along
11). Brad Paisley, Time Well Wasted. Arista. ****.
The only point at which Paisley oversteps the line between aw-shucks humor and Hee Haw is on the cornpone out-takes and blooper reel at the end. Which comes after a full fifteen tracks of the best of modern popular country, so even then I’m inclined to forgive him a guest appearance from William Shatner.
12). Ryan Adams & The Cardinals, Cold Roses. Lost Highway. ****.
Hoo-boy. Three albums in one year, kids, so let’s get this right. This isn’t the mopey concept-piece where every track represents a different year of his twenties. It isn’t the uneven one with the appropriately comatose Norah Jones duet. It’s the good one. Full review.
13). Chris Whitley, Soft Dangerous Shores. Messenger. ****.
A complex, dense album that trades in love and death, given further, tragic weight by the 43 year-old Whitley’s entirely unexpected death to lung cancer in October 2005.
14). Thad Cockrell & Caitlin Cary, Begonias. Yep Roc. ****.
Two of the finest singer-songwriters in alt-country team up for a duets album that owes more to George & Tammy and Gram & Emmylou than to the genre’s current standards for collaborations, which amount to attractive adult contemporary stars screaming in each other’s direction about how their marriage is better than yours could ever be.
15). Shelby Lynne, Suit Yourself. Capitol. ****.
As though she’s ever bothered to suit anyone else. Her little sister may have outgrown her artistically, but the high points of Suit Yourself don’t want for much.
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And 2005’s Top 10 Country Singles
10). “Boondocks,” Little Big Town.
A little geography lesson for the idiot hipster kids in their ironic John Deere trucker hats who endorse big country singles like “Boondocks” and its immediate forebear, “Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy)”: you can’t really get away with claiming that you’re from the boondocks if you’re from an upper middle class subdivision in a city of nearly 400K people. Since they’re local, I can call bullsh!t on Little Big Town. But, what “Boondocks” completely lacks in street-cred, it makes up for in production values: it’s composed of an instantly memorable melodic hook repeated with new layers-- four-part vocal harmonies, a nifty little banjo riff-- added on each go-round until the whole damn thing just collapses under its own weight and these Gap models posing as country singers start carrying on about going fishing in the crawfish hole. And you don’t believe for a second that they know what a crawfish actually looks like, but you’ll sing along with them in spite of yourself.
09). “Keep Your Distance,” Patty Loveless.
Loveless, who’s been the best hard-country singer in Nashville for going on twenty years and without anyone to challenge her for that title, found a nice middle-ground between the bluegrass of her astonishing Mountain Soul and the poppier country of her commercial hey-day on Dreamin’ My Dreams. Though the songs she chose for the album weren’t start-to-finish great, her cover of Richard Thompson’s “Keep Your Distance” makes for a stirring admonition, and it’s really saying something that it’s one of her best-ever vocal performances. None of the current crop of Nashville pop-country singers could even hope to match this.
08). “Tell It To Me,” Old Crow Medicine Show.
Were they not so committed to their old-timey shtick, Old Crow Medicine Show may have updated this song to be a cautionary tale against the current drug-of-choice for the rural poor. Alas, crystal meth doesn’t make for as many possible rhymes as do corn liquor and cocaine, so “Tell it to Me” sounds like an oddball country song about Lindsay Lohan. Which is probably just as funny, and with better teeth besides.
07). “Probably Wouldn’t Be This Way,” LeAnn Rimes.
In what was the year’s most singularly pleasant surprise, the young woman who’d made a lucrative career out of over-emoting like a strangled Muppet grew up to be a fine interpretive singer. “Probably Wouldn’t Be This Way” is a devastating ballad of grief, and Rimes’ subtle performance gives the song the gravity it demands. She still doesn’t sound a thing like Patsy Cline, but LeAnn Rimes now sounds like a singer worth taking seriously in her own right.
06). “Another Travelin’ Song,” Bright Eyes f/ Emmylou Harris.
As a rule, I’m not especially fond of the indie kids who “go country” as something halfway between a novelty and a right-of-passage into more mature territory. But lil’ Conor Oberst, insufferable though he may be most of the time, at least had the good sense to have the finest harmony vocalist in the history of popular music join him on what, because of her contributions, sounds more like a foray into Gram Parsons territory than it would have otherwise.
05). “Two Different Things,” Thad Cockrell & Caitlin Cary.
Witty and well-written enough to skirt around the cliché upon which it’s built, “Two Different Things” is purest trad-country song of 2005. The only knock against it is actually the same one that weakens Begonias as a whole: singing about the last gasp of a relationship, the admiration that long-time friends Cockrell and Cary have for each other is nonetheless the most striking thing about the recording. That “Two Different Things” still easily rates as one of the year’s best country singles means that, if nothing else, they’re right to be so impressed by each other.
04). “Little Ghost,” The White Stripes.
As the post-Loretta authenticity fetish ratchets up another notch, you have to give Jack White and his sleazestache all the credit in the world for having the testicular fortitude actually to push “Little Ghost” as a single to country radio. Not surprisingly, they didn’t go anywhere near it, since one of their biggest moneymakers spent a very small fraction of the year in a fraudulent (!!) marriage to its subject. And, while Jack is certainly has the more ghostly complexion, it’s the former Mrs. Chesney who would make a boy say, “When I held her, I was really holdin’ air.” Whether or not her husband ever had cause to say that is another matter entirely, but it bears repeating now: Renee Zellweger still needs a sandwich.
03). “Alcohol,” Brad Paisley.
The best part? No, it isn’t the part about how alcohol helps “white people dance.” It’s that Paisley issued “Alcohol”-- which is country songwriting at its most self-reflexive, given its balance between humor-laced cautionary tale and rowdy drinking anthem-- as the follow-up to what was a career defining single, “Whiskey Lullaby,” a song about two people who literally drink themselves to death. Which is why Paisley, again, doesn’t really need to try so hard to be funny.
02). “Wake Up Older,” Julie Roberts.
Her 2004 self-titled debut holds up remarkably well thanks to far weightier material than most would-be girls-next-door would dare record, and it seems almost impossible that Roberts could sell a song like “Wake Up Older” with such conviction on just her first effort. It’s a song that explodes the country genre’s conservative sexual politics to the extent that I’m just frankly stunned that Mercury records had the balls to push it to radio at all, and Roberts, proving that she’s the real deal, sings it to within an inch of her life. The way she belts the song’s money shot, “So I found me a stranger / well, there’s comfort in danger / But I thought about you / The whole time we were gettin’ it on” is the sound of a woman fully in control of her decisions and who’s making those decisions with a full recognition of their consequences. In other words, she’s going to bed with whomever she wants and she’ll be d@mned if she may hate herself in the morning.
01). “Me and Charlie Talking,” Miranda Lambert.
Taking the hard-line twang and fiddle of Sara Evans’ spectacular “Suds in the Bucket” as a dare, Miranda Lambert’s first single was really too country for country radio, which, thanks to Big & Rich, has taken a liking to more rock-leaning singles. But “Me and Charlie Talking” comprehensively outclassed everything that country radio did play in 2005. One of those intangibles that Lambert gets-- and the one that, in her best moments, recalls a young Dolly Parton-- is how the working-class vernacular can be incorporated into a song in a way that’s natural, rather than a cloying and obvious attempt to capitalize on a catchphrase. And she’s able to incorporate that language into lines that are still poetic and wonderfully complex meditations on regret and longing: “So you treat your love like a firefly / Like it only gets to shine for a little while / Catch it in a Mason jar / And run like hell to show it off / Promises we made when we’d go walking / Well, that’s just me and Charlie talking.” Seriously, she’s just about the best thing ever.
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Causes for optimism within the country mainstream, and an excess of remarkable, heady material from some surprising sources on the genre’s fringes: 2005 really was a great year for country music. The ink already spilled over Cat Power, Jenny Lewis and The Watson Twins, and The Elected in the early goings of 2006 make me skeptical as to the possible outward ripple effects, but I can’t say that anything that looks to re-establish country’s broader credibility is a bad thing. If not necessarily anything that would rival the Hank Williams / Patsy Cline "Golden Era", country has managed to put itself in as artistically rich a position as it’s occupied in at least a decade. How long that will last, though, is anyone’s guess.
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