Tag Archive: Alt.Country


NO DEPRESSION IN HEAVEN AND ON SONY

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January 26, 2014

Just enjoyed reviewing Uncle Tupelo’s No Depression which is reissued tomorrow for the second time.

This time around it has gained the prestigious status of a Sony Legacy Edition and is bulked out to a hefty 35 track double CD.

Many of such releases aim to get punters to buy records they already have, often with some scrappy outtakes that never made the final cut for a good reason. This Sony product, however, includes tracks that any true fan of Alternative Country (whatever that is) needs to hear.

The rough around the edges demos prove what a dynamic band UT were in their day – full of  youthful punk attitude yet had a healthy respect for the rebel music of the past. Blues Die Hard is particularly great and ,for once, the alternate takes merit inclusion.

The whole package had me listening again to Uncle Tupelo’s back catalogue along with The Flying Burrito Brothers & Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music. Alt.Country’s not Dead.

Check out the grainy quality of Uncle Tupelo’s first TV appearance and feel the energy:

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ADAM STAFFORD IN ROCKLAND

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August 19, 2013

Cover to Imaginary Walls Collapse

Y’all Is Fantasy Island is not a name that rolls off the tongue easily and when this Indie band from Falkirk, Scotland split in 2010 few grieved and  many, myself included, didn’t even know they existed.

I came across them while reviewing the excellent new album by Adam Stafford who was the band’s lead singer and driving force.

Stafford has his own record label Wise Blood Industries (which I like to think was named after Flannery O’Connor’s sublime novel) and if you go to the label website you will find a link to a zipped file containing the complete works of Y’all Is Fantasy Island –  55 songs and 5 albums.

The cynic in me thought that if he was now giving all these away tracks they must have been crap so I was, to coin an overused phrase, blown away by how good they are/were. An album called No Ceremony is particularly impressive.

Sure, it is derivative (what isn’t?) but they have processed their influences in a way that sounds pretty dynamic to my ears. You can tell they had fully absorbed their albums of gothic alt.country like Songs:Ohio and Will Oldham’s various incarnations of Palace together with a healthy diet of Grunge. It will cost you nothing to take a listen for yourself.

And while you’re about it you really must near the aforementioned Adam Stafford solo album called Imaginary Walls Collapse and is out now on Song, By Toad Records. Continue reading →

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RICHARD BUCKNER IN A BOX

Filed under: Blogging, Music — 1 Comment
April 13, 2011

A quickie post to give a link to a link to a blog from southwest Virgina  I stumbled upon yesterday called A Truer Sound .

The name that made me sit up and take notice was Richard Buckner who has made some classic, and seriously undervalued, alt.country albums .

His top three releases, IMHO, are:
Devotion And Doubt (1997)
Bloomed (1994)
The Hill (2000)

The latter was one of my first reviews for Whisperin’ and Hollerin’  which, if you’re interested,  you can read here.

The mp3s for download are live tracks from 1996 and, from the couple of tracks I’ve heard so far, they are good quality recordings.

Whoever put this package together has approached the task with love and dedication. The zip file comes complete with specially designed cover art.

Strongly recommended for fans of heartfelt twang.

On the same blog, there’s also a mixtape of the author’s favourite tracks of 2010 which are also well worth downloading.

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THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO WOVENHAND

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December 2, 2010

According to Wikipedia, Colorado has an above average proportion of citizens who claim no religion – David Eugene Edwards is not among them.

Born in the city of Eaglewood in 1968, he makes no secret of the fact that he is a committed Christian who literally believes every word of the Bible.  He spent many of his formative years accompanying his grandfather, a Nazarene preacher, as he travelled through small towns to spread the word of the gospel.

In touring as leader of Alt.Country band 16 Horsepower, and now of  Wovenhand,  Edwards is a type of modern-day roving preacher-man delivering his sermons in the form of mostly very bleak songs.

He leaves the listener  in no doubt  that the wages of sin signify death and the prospect of eternal life in Christ doesn’t seem to provide much in the way of consolation or joy. Continue reading →

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THE NEXT AMERICAN MUSIC

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July 17, 2009

I’ve just finished ‘It Still Moves’ by Amanda Petrusich the subtitle of which is  ‘Lost songs, lost highways and the search for the next American music’. I wanted to read this after being impressed by a short piece she wrote about music from the Mississippi region in the Epiphanies column of July 2009’s  Wire magazine. In this she describes herself as an unlikely fan of the Delta Blues, having been born in New York City in 1980 and growing up with “a penchant for Cyndi Lauper cassettes”. In many ways she’s also an unlikely contributor to the Wire which favours experimental and avant-garde above the more mainstream orientated music Petruish has written about for Pitchforkmedia.com or as contributing editor at Paste magazine.

In her book, she attempts to define ‘Americana’ by taking a solitary road trip to some of the key musical locations – past and present.  She tries to piece together this complicated story to discover “how and why this music has changed – into Rock’n’Roll, into Nashville Country, into Alternative Country, into Indie-Folk and Free-Folk “.  Inevitably, it’s also a story of how America has changed and is changing. Continue reading →

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