Jim White - fact and myth

One thing that is not obvious from Jim White’s music is if he has a particularly vivid imagination, or if he has actually led a fierce and exotic life. Another thing that isn’t clear to me is whether or not this actually matters.

Of course, the answer to that first question is of immense importance if you are attempting to conjure up some sort of objective analysis of Jim White – the person, the life. But in terms of making some sort of subjective judgement of his music, the roots of the lyrics, the origins of his musical soul, could perhaps be dismissed. More than that, in fact: they must be dismissed. Because with every tale of knowing Jesus, with every lost love described with phlegmatic abandon, White deliberately obscures the truth, blurring the distinction between fact and myth with his imaginative and unstructured lyrics, his other-worldly characters, and his subtle, brittle, space-country music.

White’s influences are so numerous that they literally compete for your attention as they make short, sharp pleas for primacy in each song; once more, the South comes across as that melting pot that Levon Helm so usefully described: the place where blues, gospel, folk, Cajun, show tunes, rockabilly and, of course, country music came together to form rock and roll. The South is relevant in White’s albums in a very tangible sense. With some country music, especially that peddled by alt-country performers, the South is conjured up in the listener’s mind by a process that is somewhat circular: we assume country sounds originate from the South, these guys are singing some kind of country, so it must be based on the South. Well, fair enough, but with Jim White you don’t have to make such a convoluted – if subconscious – leap of musical logic. He actually sings about the South. Not by writing a stanza about the deep waters of the Mississippi, or a rhyming couplet likening Alabama to someone’s mama, but in a manner which is at once less obvious and more definitely rooted in that part of America. This is transient music, taking you from place to place, but always with those touches which define the area – the dust, the motor homes, and an inherited faith in Jesus. While it never touches any specific part of the South, White’s music encompasses the whole place.

Take, for example, Heaven of My Heart. One of the more traditional sounding songs on White’s first album, Wrong-Eyed Jesus (1997), it kicks off with a jaunty Cajun-inflected accordion, immediately conjuring up vivid images of the South’s south – the song is from New Orleans. But is it? The steel guitar which enters soon and contributes comfortable licks throughout the song suggests something more akin to the open country, the campfire. The lyrics, for their part, don’t really tell a specific story – like many of White’s songs, they communicate to the listener via a series of snapshots which, though not quite disjointed, are certainly fragmentary. But the overall picture does have an organic feel to it; it must do, as the more peculiar lines within the song don’t feel out of place:

And the shining stars guiding stars pointing away to the heaven of my heart
And guiding stars pointing away to the heaven of my heaven of my heart
Yeah I got a funny bone laugh like a mule I always did pretty good in school
But still I cannot decipher this girl's arithmetic
Still I walk to the moon I'd lick this spittoon I'd wear woolly underwear in the summer
Just to show her how much I want her your loveable lunatic

But this should be little surprise – one of the lessons you learn from many of Jim White’s songs is that, in his world anyway, there is a fine line between the concrete, certain reality and the ethereal, dreamlike visions that can come to you so easily. White’s songs are awash with fine lines, and also a tangible sense of fragility. The quiet banjo-led introduction of Sleepy Town brings home how much he seems to miss the country-ranch-prairie lifestyle, but equally, there is a seedy quality which suggests a wistfulness for the darker side of life: the brothel behind the bland façade of the sleepy town. But these feelings are so closely meshed that he can really only be saying, there is a fine line. However broad that façade is, it can never be more than paper-thin; and the people living on either side of it are all-knowing.

Tales of loss – avoidable loss? - recur throughout Wrong-Eyed Jesus. Sometimes they are comparatively small-time, though no less tragic for that; at other times the stories are downright awful. But either way, White tells them with a delicate and sensitive touch, both lyrically and sonically. Often his voice sounds like it has been recorded via a tin can, and the words he writes are no less interesting:

I pour whiskey in the honeycomb,
It makes the bees all turn to angels
I watch ’em fly off into heaven...
Disappear where I can’t follow
And I would write Jesus a letter
But I hear that he don’t speak English...
So instead I’ll just throw these cobblestones until I ring that old church bell

Meanwhile, the music itself contributes lines both rhythmic and melodic, sweeping in and out, always based on a warped version of down-home country, counterpointing the lyrics but fitting them well.

The songs have their own kind of momentum – they never explode but they do build to a pinnacle, a point of the utmost extreme of whatever emotion White wishes to convey. But there is a feeling of unfulfilled anguish, as if White is still holding something back, and it is this which gives all of his work that sense of fragility. That first album seems to hold everything together – just – very well. By the time of his second album, No Such Place (2001), the results are rather more mixed. The high-points of this record are better than anything found on Wrong-Eyed Jesus. By now he is constantly pushing his own sense of vulnerability to the limit, and on Christmas Day he pulls it off, telling an astonishing story of a loss to which he is already perfectly resigned:

When the words you must utter are hopelessly tangled
In the memories and scars you show no one
So seldom a door…so seldom a key
So seldom a hit like the hurt you put on me
But seldom comes happiness without the pain of the devil in the details
Since I saw the smile on your face as I was crying
In a Greyhound station on Christmas Day…in 1998

This story is at once both uniquely personal and universal. The name of year, 1998, is sung repeatedly, but while for many songwriters this device would be used if there were some broader historical importance to the date, for Jim White this is not necessary. Every person has had years of their lives which were particularly significant, memorable or momentous, years which to most other people seem unimportant; for the narrator in Christmas Day, 1998 was such a year. But what happened on Christmas Day that year? He saw her face in a Greyhound Station – one of the most quintessentially and everyday American settings imaginable. And that is the beauty of Jim White’s songwriting – it makes you believe, or at least imagine, that however mundane the practical details of the life being described, its stories can nonetheless be full of the most extreme emotions and earth-shattering events and relationships.

But therein lies the risk that White is taking. Because while Christmas Day is a fine composition and a perfectly-realised performance, on other songs the marriage of lyrics and music isn’t quite sufficient to deliver a similar narrative and emotional message while still making for enjoyable listening. At some points on the album, the gaps between lyrics and music, and between his inner-most thoughts and more general palatability, become almost too much to take. In The Wrong Kind of Love, these tensions are stretched beyond what is sensible, and the result is a degeneration into some sort of electronic-country incidental music. The centrepiece of the song is White’s gentle description of a girl or woman who wants the sort of love that he says is the wrong kind, and his inability to break free of it:

Come beg, borrow, steal, or fight
'Cause you never felt nothing so real or right as this wrong...wrong kind of love

Unfortunately, the melody White uses is rather too familiar. When White’s songwriting comes together, the result is flawless songs which resist all criticism; at other times, it seems that the melody was the last thing he put his mind to, and the outcome is often a re-hashed tune of limited range. In The Wrong Kind of Love, his standard vocal is supported by a mock tinny radio voice contributing its view on the song’s subject. Meanwhile, the instrumental accompaniment produces a pleasing enough representation of a wild, mystical night on the prairie – but it bears little relation to the words.

Towards the end of No Such Place, White finds safer ground in his more geographical music – his road music. The story of Hey! You Going My Way??? is less meaty and substantial than some of his other efforts: he brings his extremities closer to familiar ground, and the result is more successful (perhaps there is only room for one Christmas Day on an album). His evocation of “the geeks and the freaks and the crooks and the hookers” is reminiscent of the Velvet Underground – this must be deliberate, as White’s vocal at this point seems to be a tribute to Lou Reed – and the song certainly has the Velvets’ sense of subtle urgency. But the song also contains the more natural, less forced, power of, say, Alejandro Escovedo.

The last original song on the album is The Love That Never Fails, and it sees White returning once more to those traditional aspects of the South for his inspiration. Country sounds forms the basis for the song’s music (although, typically, sitars play their part). He sings gently of a an enduring love which is clearly based on some sort of religious tenet – once again, the message is a personal one, but he relates the tale to the “Angels of Death” and, along the way, gives us a massive clue as to his inspiration:

There ain't no room for dreamers in heaven
Silver linings seldom appear-except in horrible storms

Jim White’s advice to us, suggested by his music and made explicit in this song: get your dreams in now. Such clarity is rare in White’s music, and the result is surprising. At the end of The Love That Never Fails, a string ensemble plays out gentle songs, White’s (sometimes over-used) tinny alter-ego vocal recalls lines from God Was Drunk When He Made Me – apparently a message whose importance he feels warrants reiterating – and the album comes together. Finally, fragility is forgotten. After this, the reprise of Corvair comes as a fond memory and nothing more, and in this context its excessively romantic and idealised lyrics are almost palatable.

White’s third album, Drill a Hole in That Substrate and Tell Me What You See (2004), follows on directly from the closing section of No Such Place. The stories continue in a similar vein (sometimes too similar – If Jesus Drove a Motor Home is rather too reminiscent of earlier efforts), the music is rooted in country and the South while bringing in fresh and surprising elements, and the vocals alternate between the swamp and the clouds. But White doesn’t push things to the limit quite so much, and the result, if less radical, is certainly easier to listen to.

The ambivalence White – formerly a man of the cloth – holds towards his god is even more blatant on this album. The number of mentions of God and Jesus throughout his records suggests that he is still convinced of their existence – surely he can’t be making some cute point along the lines of Dylan’s With God On Our Side every time? But in The Girl From Brownsville Texas, he makes it clear that although he believes in God, his faith in God’s ability (or desire) to be of much use to him is shaky at best:

I say "God, if you ain't smiling on me, then you ain't no friend of mine." It's late at night and this motel room's drunk, I been listening to the lonesome wind crying. My best friend once said, "Jim, what you cling to, that's the thing that you had best forget

But despite this advice, White cannot quite seem to shake God from his mind. The lyrics are far too personal for White to be making a point to the listener, along the lines of “See, how can he exist?”. White feels the need to refer many of his feelings and actions to a God he doesn’t have much time for any more – almost in the way that a person might privately continue to desire a former lover’s approval for their actions, long after that relationship has broken down. White has shattered any internal myths he held in his mind about God’s power, but he’s not sure what to fill that mental gap with. Ultimately, he suggests to God that the two of them broker a deal: if God will convince the girl from Brownsville that White is a better man than he is, then White in turn will submit to God’s will and become the “religious fool” that God desires – submitting finally to blind faith.

Ultimately, Drill a Hole… suggests only that White’s travels – in both space and time – will just carry on. As an African-sounding percussion section collides pleasingly with a tinkly piano and a country-tinged vocal from the singer, the album’s last song, Land Called Home, is probably White’s most psychedelic song thus far – he certainly sings with more than a hint of that sixties sense of abandon. And what is he singing of?

Even when he is home, White seems himself as being on the move; but that is irrelevant for the moment, as he is not there, he can only sing of it – whether he is hoping for it is unclear. Overall, the simple perspective coming out of Jim White’s music is that life is tough, but you can make it okay. Life is a journey where you encounter whatever happens to be there, and the search for some grander sense of freedom may well be a waste of time. As he sings in Handcuffed to a Fence in Mississippi (from No Such Place):

You know freedom's just a stupid superstition,
'Cause life's a highway that you travel blind.
It's true that having fun's a terminal addiction.
What good is happiness, when it's just a state of mind?
For in the prison of perpetual emotion,
We're all shackled to the millstone of our dreams.
Me, I'm handcuffed to a fence in Mississippi,
Where things is always better than they seem

But don’t be fooled into thinking that White thinks you should just accept your lot in life, or that there is nothing to be done about where you find yourself. For Jim White, freedom is deeply personal, and is achieved in the journey itself. The South, he accepts, is no great bastion of freedom. But broaden your horizons, dream your dreams, and keep moving from harsh reality to imagined fantasy, and you will, at least while you make that journey, be free.

Emmylou Harris and Steve Earle - Goodbye

Emmylou Harris' version of Steve Earle's Goodbye is a masterpiece, and for me it sums up a lot of what alt-country is about.

Alternative country music is extraordinarily difficult to define. Musical labels like that can be meaningless and irrelevant at the best of times: after all is said and done, it is about the song. If they are used to pigeon-hole artists, then these generic labels go beyond that – the artists are subjectively imagined in the minds of the listener as wearing straight-jackets.

Certainly, no definitive answer can be given to the question “What is alt-country?” The best that can be done is to use examples of the genre to create some sort of subjective understanding of what it means. As long as no insurmountable barriers, masquerading as objective arbiters of truth, are erected, then the use of alt-country as a loose guide, backed up by pertinent example and suggestion, can open up an enriched study of some of the highlights of modern American music.

I am going to start with one particular recording of a specific song. The subjectivity of this choice of song is highlighted by the year of its release. Emmylou Harris released her album Wrecking Ball in 1995, by which time some of the other landmark alt-country bands had taken shape, made their seminal albums, and in the case of Uncle Tupelo, disbanded. How, then, can one song from this album, Goodbye, be considered an inspiration for a musical movement? Surely temporal realities put paid to any claims of significance the song may have? Well, to an extent this argument is magnetic and unanswerable. But the truth is somewhat deeper. Countless albums throughout the history of popular music could have founded a genre. As it turned out (and hindsight is a wonderful thing), some did and some didn’t. What brings a small number of isolated musical coincidences together and helps bring about some sort of loose coalition is a mysterious process. It may be down to overlapping personnel or social change. But in the case of alt-country, it is possible, just possible, that the song Goodbye at least represented, and even encouraged, the growth and coalescence of alternative country as some kind of organic phenomenon.

Steve Earle’s presence on this recording is no accident, and it is certainly not another celebrity guest spot, adding little but an interesting name on the sleeve: he wrote Goodbye himself. He is there to pass on the soul of the song, the essence of its story, from one of America’s great songwriters to the country’s foremost interpreter and shaper.

The song starts with a gentle, unobtrusive acoustic guitar figure, played by Earle himself. There are then some tentative spoken words in the background, and then Earle’s Southern drawl emerges, sounding far more laid back than when he is assaulting us with his usual barrage of acerbic verbiage: “One…two…one, two, three, four”. On cue, the acoustic introduction is overlaid by a firm but delicate hit of producer Daniel Lanois’ sound, as a rolling, muted, electric band enters the fray. And with that Earle hands over his tragic ballad to Emmylou Harris and Lanois, to do with it as they see fit. Earle has been quoted as saying that to have Harris perform one of your songs is the highest compliment a songwriter can be paid, and his humility comes through in those couple of seconds: Here’s my song. It starts like this. Okay, now it’s yours. The end result is a combination of Earle’s songwriting abilities, and Harris’ genius for interpretation. And what a combination it is.

Steve Earle is one of the great American songwriters. He tells stories with good tunes, good music, and his tales have a genuine relation to the landscapes and personalities of his nation. He has been the perfect American rebel: from drugs and gun busts to jail and back, from single issue campaigning to campaigning politician, Earle’s life has provided some sort of parallel to his art, which progressed from the naive and triumphant escapism of Someday, through the grafting and fighting petty criminals of Copperhead Road, to the dramatic re-definition of patriotism that is Amerika V. 6.0.

Emmylou Harris, for her part, is not so much a songwriter as a country icon and, latterly, a superb interpreter of songs penned by others. Wrecking Ball gave an entirely new sonic dimension to country music, and this was particularly important when set against the backdrop of her history as one of the pioneering traditionalists of the country-rock movement of the early 1970s. From the mid-nineties, she made a series of records which gave a new confidence to country artists: with her albums she instilled in these artists enough self-belief to open the door to a whole range of influences and allow their music to be cross-pollinated.

Both the story of this song and Harris’ voice are simply beautiful. Her tones seem to be at one with the words she is singing, as this terribly sad tale of loss unfolds. The narrator isn’t blaming anyone but herself; and with this self-flagellation comes a naked, almost unbearable honesty:

I remember holdin’ on to you
All them long and lonely nights I put you through

The song has a vague and ethereal quality that is, however, not without its specific events – however ill-described they are – to give substance to its heartbreaking claims.

But I recall all of them nights down in Mexico
One place I may never go in my life again

Harris sings the song with a restrained sort of passion. You know that she feels the song fully and completely; but at the same time, as Earle holds back full details of what happened in those Mexican nights, what he did to destroy such a love, Harris holds back from giving her emotions free rein. She retains some semblance of control, represented by the high-pitched stridency she employs – you feel that if she were to let it all out, the whole story would doubtless emerge, and that is not the song’s intention.

In any case, it becomes gradually clearer that such emotional intensity would destroy her, because however tumultuous it would be if she were to divulge everything that took place, this revelation would be as nothing compared with the full realisation, the full expression, of the ultimate horror: the isolated but colossal gap in her memory.

Most Novembers I break down and cry
Cause I can't remember if we said goodbye

So Harris’ vocal performance is restrained by the semi-transparent, semi-opaque story delivered by Steve Earle; and the musical direction of the recording reflects this tension. Once Earle has counted it in, a soft but insistent drum-beat underpins the song; the acoustic guitar continues but is just about submerged by the more electrified – though equally muted – patterns of the electric guitar and the bass. The whole ensemble maintains its sense of quiet, but at the same time there is urgency. As Harris sings of Mexico, the Caribbean and an evocative soft breeze, the band keeps itself at one with these images by taking the listener right there – across the plains from wherever they started out (and who knows where that is) to each new location. But at the same time, the band keeps its distance from Harris, who remains within a high pitch register; at times it seems as if she wants to drag the band back to a more traditional country sound, with blunter rhythms, higher melodies and older instruments. But the band resists, and the result is a fantastically cross-fertilised sound. A country song, a country singer, an alternative feel.

So this recording of Goodbye is particularly important. Beautifully conceived and executed, it rolls across the listener’s consciousness, enforcing some kind of musical absorption which you don’t realise has taken place until the process is complete. But it is just as significant for what it represents: the fusion of the classic American songwriter and the born-again innovator. As we will see, alternative country music always has one or other of these aspects – and, when it is at its best, alt-country is precisely the combination of the two: great American-style songs recorded in an original and fresh musical style.

Whiskeytown - influencing the movement

The music produced by Whiskeytown is the music of a band that knew all but didn’t care. And uniquely for a band that began and ended their career together at such a young age, their story is a rounded one, with a beginning, a middle and an end. Other seminal alt-country bands have left us with unfinished business: Uncle Tupelo had only just discovered their most satisfying sound when they broke up; the Jayhawks moved away from their most countrified sound and then carried on in a variety of other directions. So of the most trailblazing of the groups that added a punky spice and songwriting grit to country music, only Whiskeytown give us the opportunity to assess a complete career – how it developed musically, and how it influenced a movement.

Right from the start, there was a feeling that Whiskeytown could do what none of their predecessors had really achieved – that fusion of country music, punk sensibilities, and superb songs. Their first album, Faithless Street, is not a complete album – and it is certainly not a great album. But it is a suggestive album. Faithless Street contains enough hints of songwriting expertise, enough rural American story-telling, and enough of a sense of unease at the confines of the country world, to indicate that this band could top the lot. In the event, having briefly touched some sort of alt-country summit, they disintegrated, leaving their chief protagonist, Ryan Adams, to attack on his own the challenges of maintaining the high standards he and his band had set so early on.

The fascinating thing about Faithless Street is the story-telling ability on display. In the sleeve-notes to the 1998 re-release of the record, Caitlin Cary, the band’s violinist-vocalist, says that the album exists “as a fond memory of simple times”. That may very well be true, but it also reveals the extent of the band’s carefree, devil-may-care attitude. Because at this point, the band were not writing very many personal songs – the individual emotion, the heartfelt pleas, and the heartbreaking tragedies would come later. On Faithless Street, for the most part they try their hand at telling other people’s stories. And although at times it comes across as facile and inadequate – where could they possibly have acquired sufficient empathy by their early twenties? – at other times, in particular songs, there is at least a real sympathy and understanding of other people’s problems; they manage to create an image of themselves as narrators who are also fellow strugglers. The unspoken implication is that although each person’s problem is her or his own, Whiskeytown are in that same broad category: life’s underdogs, life’s fighters. But how do they pull this off?

Take Drank Like a River, the second song on Faithless Street. It’s a song about a drunk with a story, not dissimilar to those we have all heard before. Like the album’s opening track, Midway Park, the song has an infectious sound which Ryan Adams in particular would perfect with Whiskeytown before using to glorious effect on his solo album Gold – not too heavy, with a really clean and ringing guitar sound which gives an exuberant feel to the saddest of songs. But this exuberance finds its way into the very structure of Drank Like a River, and it lends it an unconvincing air – the chorus explodes in a classic Adams rock and roll style, but the sound is at odds with the sentiment. The resulting effect is that the band don’t seem to have got inside the character’s head, inside his life – and in fact the first few lines suggest the same thing - the song’s narrator isn’t even sure where the root of the drunk’s problems lie:

Well, he was nearly died when he returned to the town he'd come from
He's brown bagging it tonight behind some tavern
Somebody wrecked his life, and I'll bet you it was his darlin'

When the band back away from empathising, perhaps to take their own tentative steps on that faithless street, the record is much more successful. On Tennessee Square, the country music and the more introspective songwriting combine much more effectively, providing tasters of the brilliance to come. Two untold stories are hinted at, and the tension this provides gives a more realistic and yet still more profound feel than in some other songs on the album. The singer watches the old people dancing in a local square festooned with red ribbons, but he has no money – so he just sits and watches. He can’t join them. But a wonderfully wistful musical accompaniment gives the lie to such a simple reason for his inactivity. The people are just dancing - why can’t he join them? The majestically considered acoustic guitar and Cary’s violin combine to suggest that perhaps this narrator has greater – more emotional - troubles than he is letting on, and sure enough, as the song unfolds, he hints at just that: “Vacant parking lots across the street remind me I'm going nowhere”. So this is music as a palliative for – or maybe just a temporary escape from – the depression that is his lot in life. The singing and dancing in the Tennessee Square just brings it all home for him. This use of a more immediate and genuine emotion, using the instrumentation to make the listener think about the words, is a much more mature approach than that of telling other people’s stories.

Ryan Adams would presumably agree, because as the album unfolds, the slower songs become more and more personal, written mostly in the first person singular, and many of the ballads emerge as dry-runs, developmental works, for his later more rounded (basically better-quality) solo ballads. Faithless Street’s title track uses the violin and a very down-home guitar sound to ground the story right in the middle of country music; in fact in the middle of the country itself, and for the first time, a feeling of rural geography comes through in Whiskeytown’s sound. The band’s harmonising – usually between Adams and Cary – is both natural and sweet. But this song is important in another way. The song itself is pure country, and the first of its two verses seem to paint country music as some sort of answer to the narrator’s lack of faith in god – “So I started this damn country band”. But actually this is only half the story. It takes Adams until the end of the song to fill us in fully, suggesting perhaps a reluctance to do so. But that unease at remaining within the confines of country music eventually becomes evident:

So I started this damn country band
'Cause punk rock was too hard to sing

That last line, absent in the first verse, is crucial, and explains a lot of what would come later, from both Whiskeytown and Ryan Adams. Neither act was ever afraid to use real, unadulterated country music to express that yearning sense of loss that it exposes so well. But the adventurous quality of Adams’ songwriting will not be denied, and here, in effect, he says just that – if I could have sung punk rock, I would have done. That would be my means of escape. Another ballad, Black Arrow, Bleeding Heart, contributes to this feeling. The pure country sound of the song sits comfortably with the inevitably being expressed in the lyrics, about the incompleteness and held-back qualities of every love affair. Some other genre, or more realistically the influence of some other genre, was going to be needed if the band were to live the classic American dream through their songs. As a result, they needed, if not a conversion to full-on punk music, some more punk attitude within their country music. With their next record, Strangers Almanac, they achieved just that.

It would be unfair to say that Strangers Almanac washes away everything that was achieved in Faithless Street; though it does render its predecessor, if not irrelevant, then almost redundant. However, it begins with a nod to the slower, more countrified sound of Faithless Street. The song Inn Town appears at first to be an echo of their first album. But actually it is something more than that. Much as television programmes often begin with a recap of last week’s episode, so as to set the scene for what is about to occur, Inn Town reminds of us the sound of Faithless Street, while simultaneously giving a strong impression of a band on the edge, with loose throwaway question and answer vocals hinting at the revised sentiments and fresh sounds that are about to explode in the listener’s direction:

Fifty cents or a dollar three
I don't owe you anything
Spent a life on a heart that woul
Rather not feel anything
I can try
I can see
I can want it to be
I can laugh
I can feel
I can see anything without dreaming

And indeed, the next few songs on Strangers Almanac are delivered with that very carefree attitude: “I don’t owe you anything”. Strangers Almanac isn’t a punk album – it is a country album. But it is so infused with high quality songwriting and that punk approach that “alt-country” is perhaps the only – though imperfect – way to describe this record. Significantly, the next three songs on the album were all recorded by the band around the time they made Faithless Street. But for Strangers Almanac they were re-recorded. While before they were laid-back, with guitar lines that warmed and comforted you, now they are angry and urgent, with guitar lines that bite you. Excuse Me While I Break My Own Heart Tonight has a country vibe to it, with slide guitar and harmonica prominent, but Ryan Adams’ vocal is virtually shouted, and he pulls every single instrument in the band with him. Throughout this album, Adams as lead singer is also Whiskeytown’s lead musical instrument: the entire band moves, shifts and pauses whenever he does, and generally there is a togetherness born out of a trust in the songs’ main writer to shape the songs as he sees fit. The result is a completely organic sound, with nothing out of place. And so it transpires in Excuse Me…, with even the violin sounding bleakly livid as Adams barks out the song’s theme – it is my heart, my life, and I will destroy it. What else could I possibly do? It is mine to do with as I please.

Yesterday’s News takes the album further down the same path, pausing only to pick up fresh supplies of vitriol:

I can't stand to be under your wing
I can't fly or sink or swim
It's a lot like falling down
Standing up, and I'm falling down

Adams’ message is so explicit – look what you’re doing to me! So much for the slightly idealistic vision of two people’s love which is touched upon – either directly or through a third party – on Faithless Street. This song simmers a bit more than Excuse Me…, but its menacing feel never disappears as the backing rumbles on. The lyrics in the song Faithless Street, about playing country because punk rock was too difficult to master, seem more relevant than ever now, because the passions of Strangers Almanac sound as if they have been stored up for a long, long time, and are finally breaking free – perhaps from the shackles of country music? The instrumentation, of course, is still country-oriented, and who can blame the band for this? Their combination of electric and acoustic, piano and organ, violin and harp, singer and harmonist, is a good one, and enables them to retain much of what is good about country music: genuine heartfelt emotion and a tangible sense of American musical geography. But the songwriting is the key here, because Ryan Adams has found a way to express, lyrically, his restlessness. He then delivers this punked-up message with an appropriate vocal style, and that country band takes on that attitude as it follows him.

Arguably, then, the beauty of Strangers Almanac lies less in any individual songs and more in the overall sound that is created by that combination of writing, band and attitude. But along with Excuse Me While I Break My Own Heart Tonight, the record does contain two further real masterpieces. Houses on the Hill harks back to the attempts made on Faithless Street to tell the story of another person – someone to whom the narrator has no discernible link. But whether Adams grew significantly as a storyteller between these two albums, or whether he increased his life experiences so much that he could write with real empathy about a broader range of things, this dip into a more conventional country song is perfectly-formed – relaxed, poetic, and above all convincing. In some ways the piano gives the song a slightly contemporary edge, but in this song Caitlin Cary’s violin combines even more effectively with Adams’ voice than her own voice does, and it is this that provides appropriate backing to the story. The songwriting lesson here is “less is more”, as Adams floods the songs with rich images described with a frugal use of words:

There were stars in the sky
There were bunkers on the hill and there were caskets to fill
Where he will lie
Shrouded in the red white and blue with the stripes

An economic use of words – often the sign of a mature and thoughtful songwriter - is even more obvious on this album’s other stand-out track, Losering. The song starts with the premise of an invented word, and to be honest, such a trick at once hints at possible genius and warns of pretentious nonsense. The reality is fortunately closer to the former than the latter. In the context of the song’s few other lyrics, and the mood of the song in general, the word “losering” takes on a massive and portentous meaning. As the song inexorably builds, as the electric guitar becomes ever denser and the harmonica and violin in turn enter the fray, Whiskeytown build a classic piece of alt-country. Again, in some intangible way, the song is rooted in the country – not as directly as, say, Emmylou Harris’s vocal performances or Jim White’s soundscapes, but still there is something in Losering that sums up the vast, sparse nature of much of the country from which this music emanates.

So Losering sums up what Whiskeytown achieved in Strangers Almanac: well-written rock music with a modern country feel to it, a carefree attitude, and a strong sense of Americana culture and geography. It is similar in that respect to Uncle Tupelo’s Andoyne. But while the latter album represented Uncle Tupelo’s swansong, thus ensuring the band went out on a high (and with a legend intact), Whiskeytown went on to make Pneumonia. With Strangers Almanac under their belts, more life experience to fuel both their writing and their performances, and an even better collection of songs, Pneumonia should have been a masterpiece – the album where the band took the Strangers Almanac sound – and hence alt-country – to a whole new level. But the reality was somewhat different. After much production and re-production, Pneumonia was released after the band had broken up; in fact after Ryan Adams’ first solo album, Heartbreaker, had come out. And either by accident or Adams’ design, Pneumonia sounds like the musical link between Heartbreaker and his next solo record, Gold. That is not to say it is a bad album – far from it. But rather than being Whiskeytown’s magnum opus, it comes across as a snapshot of where one man was at certain, very transitional, time.

Pneumonia is a gentler album than Strangers Almanac; it has a gentler sound and its songs carry a gentler message. Ryan Adams’ vocals dominate throughout – indeed, the two elements which make Pneumonia a really good album, possibly rescuing it, are the quality of the songs and Adams’ vocal style. His ability to lead and shape a band was first evident on Strangers Almanac; ever since then he has used this skill to great effect, and Pneumonia is no exception. From the outset, with the opening bars of The Ballad of Carol Lynn, his high and soulful tones act as a very real link between traditional country music and the more individualistic direction he was moving towards. But for the rest, the sound of Pneumonia is more of a mixed bag. The opening song features horns, which re-emerge from time to time; and the piano is much more prominent than on Whiskeytown’s first two albums. A key aspect of good quality alt-country music has been subtle and considered use of the piano: if there is too much piano, it dominates the other instruments to the extent that what could be a genuinely collaboratively band degenerates into a honky-tonk ensemble, or in the case of ballads, a lounge group. Pneumonia threatens to head in this direction at times – and it is difficult to escape the feeling that this is due mainly to Ryan Adams himself, who is after all the main pianist on the album.

However, we shouldn’t judge the album based on a set of premises which the band probably had no thought of when they were making the album. At times, Adams’ piano is used at just the right level, as part of a band. This is never truer than on My Hometown. Several songs on Pneumonia hark back to the narrator’s younger days, even his childhood. However little life experience someone has had, they will have a full childhood of some sort to look back on, and this is perhaps why the further back Adams’ retrospectives go, the better they are as songs:

On back down in my hometown
Everybody's feelin' it bad
No new breaks, whatever it takes
Not to have to sway it on a classified ad

Hey there Ma and Pa here I am
Money's running out all the same
I just close my eyes and bring it on home again

In the wrong hands, these lyrics – and by extension the whole song - could be cloying and sentimental. But with Whiskeytown, something saves the song and makes it sound like well developed – almost poetic – alt-country. What is that something? It is hard to pin down, but contributory factors include the subtle use of the piano, the delicate harmonies (from Caitlin Cary) and steel guitar, and once more, the way the music waxes and wanes just as Adam’s voice does. This a country song, and it is alt-country partly because of the collaborative and yet firmly directed band interplay.

It is worth dwelling on Adams’ seemingly new-found ability to look all the way back to his youngest days, because it is in these songs that he and the band most successfully fuse real country music with genuine songwriting genius. Jacksonville Skyline refers even more explicitly to his hometown, and although fans are well used to this song being performed as a solo acoustic number in concert, its incarnation on Pneumonia flows beautifully, with appropriately spaced out guitar licks and acoustic playing. Adams’ thoughtful songwriting recalls Houses on the Hill, as he creates vivid pictures which only begin to hint at the depths hidden tantalisingly beneath:

Well, Jacksonville's a city with a hopeless streetlight
Seems like you're lucky if it ever change from red to green
I was born in an abundance of inherited sadness
And fifty cent picture frames bought at a five and dime

One thing is clear from Jacksonville Skyline: much of the bitterness and anger evident in Strangers Almanac receded by the time Whiskeytown made Pneumonia. Lyrically, this can be heard most obviously in Reasons to Lie, a gorgeously half-formed feast of interplay between fragile vocalist, sweet guitar and confident violin. There is a hint of the old bitterness, but the sense that the narrator is looking for someone to blame has disappeared; or, if anything, he now blames himself. On Pneumonia, Adams begins to give expression to his own failures and frailties – something which would become a common theme in his later solo work.

The change in mood, from blame to lament, can also be heard in the overall sound. Pneumonia is a smooth album. It still has all those classic country-rock instruments – the steel guitar, the mandolin and the violin all compete for space with the more conventional rock instruments, just as on the two previous Whiskeytown albums. But while on Strangers Almanac the instruments retained a sense of individuality while also coagulating as a band, on Pneumonia there is perhaps too much direct merger between them. On songs like The Ballad of Carol Lynn and Don’t Wanna Know Why, despite some good lyrics and infectious hooks, the message is less outspoken, less outrageous, and the violin and jingle-jangle guitar are muffled. The addition of horns adds to this feeling too. Of course, this is essentially a problem of production, and is no reflection the band members’ playing; but given the music they made before, it is something of a shame. Pneumonia is probably the best collection of songs that Whiskeytown ever produced – other than those already mentioned, What the Devil Wanted, Sit and Listen to the Rain and Crazy About You demonstrate quite clearly the songwriting talent that Adams possessed in his mid-twenties. But at times, and to be fair only at times, the sound behind the songs isn’t quite as incisive as it needs to be.

Following My Hometown, Pneumonia draws slowly and majestically towards a close with the song Easy Hearts. The band provides a wonderfully drawn-out and lazy accompaniment to Ryan Adams as he sings “I’ve had a pretty hard life” – and whether he really had had a hard life at the time he wrote this song no longer matters, because he is now so comfortable with putting himself in someone else’s shoes – a talent he developed on the job. Caitlin Cary harmonises with Adams at length, and her vocal presence makes it easy to imagine that she is the person to whom he sings “Can I be yours tonight?” However the reality is somewhat more prosaic, a fact that Cary herself seems to recognise with her violin lines after the chorus, which reach out to him not for reconciliation but for a final farewell – they see to be replying to his plea with “No, it is time to go our separate ways”. After all, as Adams says before making his request, “If the money isn’t right…” After the emotional push-and-pull of Easy Heart, there is little left for Pneumonia to say. Bar Lights, packed full of jaunty violin, upbeat picked guitar, and a slightly more unhinged vocal, represents one last look back to the carefree days of Strangers Almanac. But that is all it is. For better or for worse, Ryan Adams had taken full control of his music, and would go on to make several albums which would arguably out-do anything his old band ever came up with. But for the defining and perfectly executed alt-country record that is Strangers Almanac, and also the flawed but superbly written Pneumonia, we should be forever grateful to Whiskeytown.

Alejandro Escovedo - American musician

Here I look at the music of Alejandro Escovedo, a superb songwriter and one of the most important alt-country artists.

The trajectory of Alejandro Escovedo’s solo career has, so far, taken the appearance of a mountain with no downwards path, or a crescendo which maintains top volume indefinitely. Cut off – temporarily but for no small amount of time – by serious illness, Escovedo’s recording career was halted after he had made two records of seemingly insurmountable power, quality and feeling – the first perhaps more soulful and personal, the second probably a fuller realisation of the sound he had been striving for. With the quality of his songwriting, the maturity of his sound, and the diverse influences he reflects, his music reflects what it is to be a true and perfectly formed American musician.

By the turn of the 21st century, Alejandro Escovedo had become a master of what might best be called the ‘epic ballad’. Conventionally we are used to ‘epic’ songs being long affairs, with majestic lyrics talking of grand ideas complemented by overstated guitar solos and a dense sound. What is this all in the name of? Power. Ultimately, Escovedo has shown us that there are more interesting ways to make powerful music. But in the meantime, he has spent a great deal of time – and vinyl – perfecting this art.

Right from Paradise, the opening song on his 1992 album Gravity, it is clear that Escovedo is searching for that particular combination of the grand and the delicate, the broad and the personal. Often on his early albums, he takes a fairly meaningful set of lyrics – about home, family or history - adds in a folk or country instrumental feel, and then finally plasters on that 70s grandeur: piano, a big (in sound if not in terms of size) band, brazenly portentous chords. He is, after all, a big fan of Ian Hunter and Mott the Hoople, and you can tell. But he isn’t an imitator – his aim is to harness that big sound to his own, more introspective, ends:

Did you hear the bells a ringing
Or was that just in my head
Thought I heard the angels singing
Their wings brush across my face

There is no big idea here – this is Alejandro Escovedo’s life. First of all an acoustic guitar introduces the song’s riff; next, the singer himself begins to tell his tale; and then one by one the piano, basic drum beat and electric band enter the fray. It doesn’t sound bad – there is a natural progression to the song – but the layerered approach is somewhat crude. Time and again, on both Gravity and its successor Thirteen Years (1993), Escovedo takes a similar approach – sometimes obviously, occasionally more cohesively, and often at the expense of bothering with, or maybe finding space for, an original melody. All of this is in the name of trying (too hard?) to create a comfortable vehicle for his message: that the most intimate sentiments, the most personal of songs, can contain within them the biggest ideas of all.

In the meantime, the songs where Escovedo is less ambitious (musically, not lyrically) are much more satisfying and revealing. With its prominent country-tinged pedal steel, and the initial string sounds that would become such a feature of the Escovedo sound later on, Broken Bottle is a poignant ballad. The imagery around the title lyrics are so complete that you can forgive “J’aime mon amour / J’aime mon amour / Fools for love in every language”:

So pour me a drink from a broken bottle
And fill my glass with dirty water
What I’ve lost is gone
What I’ve gained has no name
And I’ll take my leave once more

Equally rounded – and also downright enjoyable – are the full-on rockers on his early albums. Thanks to his earlier career in the True Believers, Escovedo is well experienced with bringing the house down, and his albums are littered with real bar-room stuff – loose, carefree and containing equal measures of roll and rock. There is a secondary joy within Escovedo’s frequent switches to rocker mode: the depth and significance of his lyrics remain intact; they don’t disappear along with their more natural companions, the ballad, the string section and the pedal steel. Any songwriter will tell you, retaining your ’seriousness’ when writing up-tempo songs can be very difficult. Escovedo pulls it off by lightening his lyrics slightly, anticipating and adjusting for the brighter mood which will inevitably come with the faster song. So while early gems like Five Hearts Breaking and Last To Know contain the most transparent and solemn keys to his thoughts, a less wistful side to the narrator is shown in rockers like One More Time and Mountain of Mud.

Whatever kind of song Escovedo is singing, the expression and coherence of the music are emphasised (in the case of his better songs) and saved (in his more imperfect numbers) by his voice. Often within the same song, Escovedo will sound broken and yet healed, firm but still plaintive, and tender while still stoical. In Last to Know, he pulls the listener in two distinct directions – the words of the refrain make you want to cry out for the aching pain the narrator must be feeling; but the finesse with which he sings the lines make you want to break into a smile in recognition of the vocal qualities he displays. When he sings “More miles than money / Look at our lives and it’s so funny” it is as if he has summed up what his music is all about – not accepting his poor lot in life, not making an unconvincing martyred claim that “life is bad, but hey, we should be thankful for whatever we have”, but writing and performing the songs just as a way of sharing – and maybe, on occasion, healing. The lyrics alone do not communicate this message – they need the versatility and magic of Escovedo’s voice to get across the full breadth of his feelings.

Five Hearts Breaking suffers from more than one of the flaws of his earlier work: re-hashed instrumental riffs and the absence of much melodic variety. But again, his voice is wonderfully expansive, telling the story so convincingly that surely, surely, every word is true. The lyrics are indicative of the general direction of much of his work:

Her eyes are taken from the stars above
Her voice is five hearts breaking
Her voice is five hearts breaking

Escovedo demonstrates here his ability to show belief in some sort of destiny. It is doubtful that his sense of fate is based ultimately or solely on any religious faith – in Gravity, for example, he sings “No angels hanging from the ceiling can save you”, and in doing so he echoes a common theme in alt-country and other, recent, music to come out of the South: the use of religion as a crutch, a comfort and an imperfect belief system – one that does not provide all the answers. The usual questions regarding why God allows such a flawed world are never put, not because to do so would be blasphemous, but because the harsh reality lying behind those questions is now taken as read by the likes of Steve Earle, Jim White and Alejandro Escovedo. For them, it is far more interesting to move on from that basic point and write songs in and around the uncertainty that remains. It is clear that Escovedo does not see his sense of destiny as completely pre-determined, but nonetheless there is a sense of some sort of spiritual faith in his work. But this belief is never at the expense of a more personal love, which is at once more materialistic and more human, and whose exposition is just as poetic.

One other musical feature of Escovedo’s earlier albums that marks him out as different from his Americana contemporaries is his use of string sections – not the fact that he uses violins, violas and cellos, but the way he uses them: complete string sections as an independent and leading voice in his ensemble. On Thirteen Years, Escovedo still seems to be trying to reach that perfect marriage of the epic sound with the song in ballad form. The strings are a lot more prominent on Thirteen Years than they had been on his earlier material, and the strings perform as one unit – they are well to the fore of the sound, introducing the riffs and themes on many songs and leading the rest of the band. The result is far removed from strings’ more traditional role in popular music, with a small number of instruments present just to add colour: on this album, the sound is approaching the orchestral. On Try, Try, Try, the strings dominate an ensemble which otherwise consists of just an acoustic guitar and a bit of bass, as Escovedo attempts to find a suitable accompaniment for his bid to break away from faith and solve his problems without appeal to a higher power:

Lock away all your saints
Cos I’m gonna get it right

It is easy to be critical of the imperfections of albums like Gravity and Thirteen Years; for all of the flashes of brilliance that both contain, they do contain flaws – that is inevitable when the project being attempted is so ambitious. But on With These Hands (1996), Alejandro Escovedo finally realised what I have termed the epic ballad – a seamless, coherent and organic marriage of the most intimate and heartfelt stories with an appropriately majestic musical setting. While his earlier work sounds at times like he has plastered various ideas together, on With These Hands, Escovedo is the master of everything he attempts.

A classic case in point is the album’s emotional centre-piece, Pissed Off 2am. Normal song classification would have this number down as a ballad. As with most ballads, it has subject matter which is sad, it is slow-paced, it has sweet but not cloying harmonies, and it is full of the language of loss, drink, and lack of meaning. It touches the listener, and creates a visual image – the two protagonists are there, right in front of you, you feel like you know everything there is to know about their story, you share the singer’s despair…ultimately you begin to identify with him, however silly and inappropriate this is. But this song has something else – it has a subtle but clearly present force, which drives the song in a way which sets it apart from most ballads. It is difficult to pin down exactly how Escovedo achieves this. As with all good epics, there is a piano – but it isn’t the ostentatious plonking he has previously employed, it is more a series of delicate whispers, just in the right place, adding to the melody rather than disguising the lack of one. The lyrics also play their part in creating such a unique song – they are not the simple platitudes of loss, but something far more complex. Escovedo doesn’t just have to fight the reasons given to him for the changes in his life – there are also “barricades”, real obstacles, which he tries to knock down merely by denying their meaning. But the barricades appear again and again in the song, and the story remains unfinished, the suffering unresolved.

Why don’t you sleep?
You look as though you need it
The barricades and reasons
They mean nothing to me
Now they mean nothing to me

That, in fact, is the theme of the album – a yearning for times past, a realisation that times have changed in irreversible ways, and, at times, an uncertain hope that things will be happy in new ways. The initial rumblings and catchy bass riff of the opening song, Put You Down, give way to a description of a love that the singer just cannot relinquish, and then we are away – eleven songs of what might be called ‘Americana’ music if only because that term means so little and encompasses so much. Acoustic folk, rustic country, Latino, rock and roll…actually that last term may be sufficient on its own. The Band’s film The Last Waltz contains a revealing interview with Levon Helm, in which he describes how lots of different musical genres come together in Tennessee, as it is geographically the heart of the United States. The result? “Rock and roll”. Escovedo’s album is a classic exposition of this fusion. The song which sounds most like a rock and roll song is probably Guilty. Unlike most of the songs on the album, it is not in the first or second person – it tells a story of someone else, a man who has lost his way and is wrapped up in shame. But this is not just a token loud, pull-out-all-the-stops, rocker. It has a superb hook – that moment in the chorus where the lyrics are perfectly matched by the melody, and where the band comes together and feels the movement, the change, in the song.

Towards the end of the album, there is another song which successfully combines the epic feel with the ballad form, and this time the power of the song is more easily identifiable. The theme of loss and renewal is poetically exposed at the outset:

Take this old and very tired skin
Wrap up a newborn baby and keep her warm

Judged on paper, the words have the potential to sound trite, but with the warmth and sincerity of the vocals, the song sounds natural and almost unassuming. The ability of music itself to rejuvenate is also recognised:

Take this old and worn out violin and hold it in your arms
And make it sing

By the time we reach the album’s title track, the record is almost complete – this is a song Escovedo wrote for his father, and the life of this brilliant but only moderately successful songwriter is put into tragic context:

They say death’s the only peace the poor understand

The song builds in intensity as it re-acquaints us with the restless growls of the opening number, and we see the light, it moves “faster, howling like the wind blows”…and the singer tells us that the water of the river will heal our wounds – because once again, although the song is not about us, we feel what he is saying. Finally, the album draws to a close and we are reminded that it contains no clear message, just some themes which point the songs in particular directions – because over some more fantastically shimmering piano work, Tugboat ends by reminding us that “Gone gone those days are gone / gone gone gone”. With Escovedo now seriously ill with hepatitis C, these thoughts move beyond being simply poignant and assume the weight of real tragedy.

So With These Hands is an album to be enjoyed by those who like good quality songs and near-perfect performance. The depth of soul on display is practically unsurpassed by any songwriter anywhere, and the articulation given to Escovedo’s emotions by the arrangements and by his own voice is simply brilliant. His challenge, then, was to follow it up with an album of equal quality but different enough to enable more originality of expression. Remarkably, with A Man Under the Influence (2001), he achieved just that – and, if anything, created an even better sound.

A Man Under the Influence is less unified, less realised and less varied than With These Hands, but in its way it is no less outstanding. With These Hands is the album where he takes everything – the stories, the sentiments, the sound – to the limit, and A Man Under the Influence is a record cut from a different mould – it is certainly more accessible. Indeed, it is probably fair to say that A Man Under the Influence is the more commercial of the two albums. In the songs where he reaches for the emotional extremes, the zeniths and nadirs of his feelings, Escovedo’s overall sound is more rounded, and more familiar from track to track. The core band on this album is pretty consistent – an acoustic guitar, a string ensemble (but used in a different, more subtle, manner), and electric guitar solos which are frequent and yet, in the main, unobtrusive. With These Hands is a more diverse record – for instance when it is time for a country song, Escovedo doesn’t do things by halves: he recruits Willie Nelson to sing and play guitar on the gorgeously poignant family history of Nickel and a Spoon. And crucially, the sound varies in keeping with the shifting emotions. In this sense it takes the listener with it: you ache when Escovedo aches, you laugh when he laughs, and you’re optimistic when he is. With A Man Under the Influence, Escovedo obtains a sound – possibly his best sound yet – and he sticks with it.

Inevitably, the result of all this is that the music fits Escovedo’s sentiments more accurately in some songs than in others. The album’s opening tracks are near-perfect in this respect, and they set an example that the rest of the songs find it a bit difficult to follow. First up is Wave, which is best described as a desert song. Unlike most of his writing, the tale here is broad. The title of the song is mysterious, as he uses the verb of his opening phrase, “wave goodbye”, instead of the more obvious farewell. But as the song unfolds, using the best elements of seventies canyon music while retaining that Escovedo mark, you are transported into the world of the narrator, a world which encompasses an emotional landscape as large as the geographical one being conveyed:

Wave goodbye, everybody waves goodbye
Climb aboard the train
Turn and wave goodbye again
Some go north
Some go south
Maybe east, some left out
Some are rich
Some are poor
But everybody’s got to wave

Wave defines a broad canvass in which the rest of the album’s songs, the more local and personal stories, can find a home. The next two songs fit right in. Rosalie and Rhapsody are of a piece, but not much less distinct for that. The former is a simply-worded (by Escovedo’s standards) love song, and it is the first indication that he has really managed to bring together and gel all of the instrumental aspects he has toyed with on previous records. The acoustic guitar provides the typical base for an Escovedo love song, and on A Man Under the Influence they also come forward more, taking little solos, inter-weaving with the pedal steel, and providing a distinct country edge to the album. The strings also play their role, but rather than taking over the band and converting it into a baroque ensemble, the strings are finally used in a more complementary manner – often we hear just a cello on its own, sometimes supplemented with a violin, adding dashes of colour. This works a lot better. Finally, the use of electric guitar solos sits well with the acoustic and strings: there are many solos on the album, but they are only ever employed when the sound of the song demands it. This kind of sound is the essence of alt-country. There is a definite country basis, emanating from both the choice of instruments and, in a more mysterious manner, the mood in which they are used. On top of that, alternative touches are added – again, the choice of instrument is relevant here, but their mode of use is equally important to finding that ‘alternative’ feel – for example the use of the cello as a richly sonorous instrument underneath the vocal, as opposed to the more common use of strings, either as part of a larger ensemble or as a solo, country-style melodic messenger.

Rhapsody is a similar song: the ensemble sounds like its members have been playing together all their lives, and for the moment the music appears to fit the sentiments, too. The presence of a strong melody helps, as Escovedo produces one of his finest expositions of the poignant retrospective love song. Using two musical terms – the everyday “melody” and the exceptional “rhapsody” – as hooks, he goes back to a point well-established in the book of Escovedo: we’re all searching for perfection, and if you can’t find one, no, it’s not okay – but whatever you have for now will have to do. But keep looking. He emphasises that last point with the closing bars of the song. After the slightest of pauses, an acoustic guitar solo, its entry dramatic, its execution delicate, plays the song out.

But however good the band sounds, it is destined not to hit the right mood for every single song, and Don’t Need You is a case in point. This is still a very good song, with an impressive sound and strong lyrics. But the two don’t quite match up. It is one of the album’s most majestic tracks: that solo cello and the acoustic guitar lead the way, interspersed with electric guitar breaks, and the overall effect is dense – there is little room for more. But the words of the song are so bleak. The repeated message is blunt:

I don’t need you
I don’t need you
I don’t need you
Like you don’t need me

This is a big statement. But as he sings it, his voice falters ever so slightly: is it deliberate? Does he mean it or is he just saying, we do need each other, but it has to be mutual, otherwise forget it? Either way, there are hidden and quite tender depths to this song which could be explored if only there were room, and, as a swirling organ joins the band, the listener has little choice but to accept the words at face value and move swiftly on.

This is a shame, because the lyrics on this album are in no way compromised by the increased unity of sound. The danger must have been fairly obvious: once the decision had been made to go with a particular ensemble and its music, it would have been easy enough to write songs to match that sound. But no – the integrity of the songwriter is a constant feature of Escovedo’s records, which are really no more and no less than his attempts to express what he has to say. So despite the occasional – and we shouldn’t over-state it – lack of uniformity between sound and words, this album is in not Escovedo’s middle ground.

Velvet Guitar is ostensibly a song about writing songs and his unquenchable desire to play his guitar and make his music. But he begins to tell us that he doesn’t care exactly what went wrong, and as he repeats the refrain “Not gonna break him down”, you realise that this is not really just about playing music, it’s about his character and his life:

I hear her sing for me
But she won’t cry for me
I’m wasted, inside

As he goes round in circles, repeating himself, the song becomes a mantra – a very personal one. But there is a strain in his voice, and he clearly cannot continue to internalise this struggle. Amidst a driving incessant rhythm, it is finally time to let the band break loose…by this point on album, this point in his career, he has the confidence to let the electric guitar solo go, give it free rein, and it fits. If he had done this too much, too early, it wouldn’t have worked. He makes sure he establishes his credentials first. So by the time it happens, it gives the song, and the refrain in particular, immense power. With this, you can only hope, he finds some sort of release. The solo itself is a good one, intricate and melodic at once, rising, dipping just a bit, rising again, rising still more, then suddenly pulling back. Reflecting what must by now be emotional exhaustion for the narrator, the electric guitar lets the picked acoustic guitar and cello finish the story.

The last two songs on A Man Under the Influence show that however much he idealises the loved ones of whom he sings, however much he fears them dragging him down while does the same to them, there is a harsher reality. In As I Fall, the bottom line is that some sort of collapse is inevitable, he falls all around the subject, “Voices call but what can I do?” It’s going to happen. He’s just telling us. Then, to finish the album, he says a similar thing more tenderly. The first few lines of About This Love say it all:

It’s all about this love
It’s all about this pain
It’s all about the loss
We take to live again
So if you see me ‘round
C’mon let me in
If you see me fall down
Won’t you let me in

Escovedo is telling you, if you see me fall, if you see me in the despair that I sing about so often, let me in. Again, it has to happen. And amidst a romantic cello, the shimmering electric guitar, and a delicate mandolin, Escovedo rounds off the story with a hint of stoicism in his voice: I’ve said my piece now.

So having used With These Hands to master a sound that would fit his imaginings, with A Man Under the Influence Escovedo relaxed and just produced fantastic songs, each with a refined and natural sound. On occasion, this sound doesn’t quite do the quality of his writing justice, but this should not detract from the significance of the record. Alejandro Escovedo has hit a musical peak, and for the moment, remains sitting proudly at its top.

Uncle Tupelo - inventing alt-country

Here's my take on Uncle Tupelo, one of the bands credited with starting the alt-country movement.

To say that I had been looking forward to hearing Uncle Tupelo’s No Depression would be putting it mildly. I had been better prepared for this album than perhaps any other – not least because I was coming to it 12 years after its release. As I discovered more and more of the alt-country field, it seemed like I was re-tracing the steps that country-rock had taken to get to where it is now. Among the Ryan Adams and Lucinda Williams records, Jay Farrar’s Sebastopol found its way into my collection and into my consciousness, and its immediacy and originality were quite startling. And then my education in Uncle Tupelo and their various offspring really did go backwards. I listened to some Wilco CDs, saw the film about the making of their classic album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, read all about Uncle Tupelo’s history, got to grips with their final album, Anodyne, and finally laid my hands on a copy of their debut record, No Depression - one of the albums widely acclaimed to have grabbed country music, shaken it free of its schmaltz, introduced it to punk, and reminded it what a few well-written songs could do.

If the term country-rock seems to be a meaningless label, a convenient way of making country music sound cool and accessible, when actually it never needed that kind of assistance, how about country-punk? Imagine Clarence White’s country picking style, combined with power chords which are delivered as a short sharp shock to your ears, literally cutting out before they begin to echo the big rock band excesses of the late sixties and seventies. That is more or less what you get in songs like That Year, Factory Belt and Flatness. These are songs written to reflect a United States that is both rural and yet industrial.

Looks like it's time to lay this burden down
Stop messing around
Don't want to go to the grave without a sound
Give this whole place a rest
Not to ride on the factory belt
Not to ride on the factory belt

The tone of the lyrics is remarkably weary coming from such young songwriters, but weary it is, as their characters (if not their selves) live an industrial life while displaying a rural mentality – there is a yearning quality which conjures up vivid images of small-town America. Whether those images are accurate or not is another issue, but this matters less than the fact that the stories told match the uneasy combination of authentic country and biting rock.

Indeed, the stinging riffs were what I came away remembering after hearing the album for the first time. Not that I was humming them to myself – if you are seeking a collection of catchy melodic hooks or vocal lines, look elsewhere. But the constant random sequencing of quick riff after quick riff, sudden tempo change, rapid country pick, lends No Depression a dynamism which is unique in character but also quite unsettling. This is not background music, and I am glad I came to it after hearing the more approachable side of Americana. The same can be said of the voice of Jay Farrar, who in the early part of Uncle Tupelo’s career was the dominant singer. Feted by such writers as Greg Kot, Wilco’s biographer, as having a golden voice, Farrar can sound very peculiar. His low tones in particular can sound graceless. But this album is pretty short of ballads, and its fast and lively style suits Farrar’s strident vocals more than any other type of song.

So did No Depression live up to the expectations I had formed? Just about. I will listen to it again and again – the way it remains resolutely upbeat in the face of some pretty gloomy subject matter makes it an album I, like many people, will turn to when I need a lift. With No Depression, Uncle Tupelo brought a modern feel, an interesting sound and a good attitude to nineties American folk music, and the influence of this album on a musical generation is undeniable. But to be honest, they left others to think about the tunes.

If nothing else, however, Uncle Tupelo laid down a distinct marker with their first album. Of course looking back, it would be easy to say that with that album they defined a genre. And although at the time even the most discerning listener couldn’t have known this for sure, it is fair to say that their debut effort marked a new departure for country music; and this, coupled with the fact that No Depression is clearly not the finished article, suggested a vast amount of potential. By the terms set by the music they made in their first album, they realised that potential with Still Feel Gone. Their second album starts with a line that would appear half way through most songs: “Falling out the window”. Jeff Tweedy even sings the line like he’s in the middle of a vocal jam. But it is the right opening line, perhaps the only sensible opening line for this album. Because with the opening flurry of easy jagged riff and harsh voice, it is as if the whole eclectic house of country-punk has come tumbling down into your lap before you can get through the front door.

In fact, Gun, the song with which the album kicks off, takes some beating. We can all name countless albums which peter out, some time soon after the promise of the first track or two. Still Feel Gone doesn’t do this, mainly because its best two songs have been placed in the two most memorable positions – first and last. If you buy this album on compact disc, you will get five very good bonus tracks tagged onto the end. Do yourself a favour – the first few times you listen, give them a miss. Because only that way will you feel you have travelled on the journey on which Uncle Tupelo’s album can take you. More than any of their other three albums, Still Feel Gone tells a story like we were taught to write them in primary school – quite simply, with a beginning, a middle and an end.

'Cause my heart it was a gun
But it's unloaded now
So don't bother

With these lines, Jeff Tweedy gives lyrical expression to the musical feel of the album. Just as the probability for confusion arising out of the combination of country and punk (as witnessed on No Depression) is resolved by the sound produced on Still Feel Gone, so these lines bring the band’s thoughts together in words. The violent idea of a narrator’s heart being a gun – not bleeding, not broken, but a deadly weapon – is counterpointed by the impotence of that very weapon. And the singer’s conclusion: oh, forget it. Once this tension is resolved, what do we get? A characteristic musical pause for breath – it does sound like the strings are breathing, you know – and then more, more, more.

That’s right – Still Feel Gone is even more relentless than its predecessor. Not until the fifth track in do we get any sign of a gentle side to the band. And even then, in Still Be Around, the acoustic guitar introduction is a prelude to an evocative song; a song of haunting doubt:

When the bible is a bottle
And the hardwood floor is home
When morning comes twice a day or not at all

As for the rest of the album’s body, the songs trip over each other, clamouring for your notice, for some special attention. None of them quite make it – what we have is a barrage of sound descending over ten songs, with all of the Tupelo trademarks: country picking, sudden stops, crunching electric guitars. But somehow, on this record, they are more together than on the band’s first album. They sound like a band without unfinished business. This sense is partly due to the words employed – the album is less sweeping than No Depression. Rather than creating broad images of blue-collar America, the lyric rely on the music to maintain that vision – which they do – and concentrate themselves on the more personal side of things. Jay Farrar’s curious voice stands out in this respect. He has the ability to sound both sublimely rich and peculiarly grating, and the nearest he gets to entrenching himself in the former quality is in the song Punch Drunk. But with the soaring way he sings the word “is”, Farrar finally combines emotion and technique in what is a seminal vocal moment.

But ultimately, the masterpiece of Still Feel Gone is surely If That’s Alright. It starts as a bleak tribute to a dream which is neither euphoric nor nightmare, but blurred circular daydream. The repetitive nature of the music is deliberate, as Farrar describes his life as a carousel, and there is definitely something vaguely hypnotic about the progression of the song. Backed initially by a lone metallic guitar which sounds like it’s been recorded not in the garage, but in the car inside the garage, Farrar delivers an intense and concentrated vocal performance, and as an organ starts softly and gradually comes to the fore, Uncle Tupelo have somehow invented alt-country, as the punky attitude, introspective lyrics, focused emotional vocals and small-guitar-organ-band all finally come together into some sort of organic whole.

In fact, I would say that it is Still Feel Gone, rather than No Depression, which sits alongside the Jayhawks’ Hollywood Town Hall as a real founding moment of alt-country – a true inspiration for the likes of Whiskeytown. No Depression fuses punk and country within the album and within songs - you can still hear the punk, you can still hear the country. The two styles fight it out for space, and that makes for an unsettling listening experience. Interesting yes, enjoyable mostly, but certainly disconcerting, at least at times. But by the second album, Uncle Tupelo had resolved the dispute. Country? Punk? Can’t find a victor? Well you’ll just have to work together. The fusion works to such an extent that by the time of their next album, the band felt confident enough to move on from the seminal sound they had invented, and make an acoustic throwback album. Because with Still Feel Gone, their first task was complete.

Produced by REM’s Peter Buck and quickly recorded in five days, Uncle Tupelo’s next record, March 16-20, 1992, has some claim to being their Basement Tapes. Like Dylan and The Band’s classic acoustic album, March 1992 contains mainly originals, some arrangements of traditional songs, and the odd cover version; also like the Basement Tapes, the feel of the album across all of these songs is historical and folky. But while the punk sound of their earlier albums has disappeared, the punk posturing remains, and the result is much darker – and vastly more powerful - than The Basement Tapes.

An early indication of what Uncle Tupelo could bring to such traditional material comes on Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down. This is not really country music – it is what most people regard as folk music, and in this case, it sounds very much like the particular strand of folk that was being played in the early sixties by people like Pete Seeger and Judy Collins. The song features a ringing guitar lines which echoes Jeff Tweedy’s vocal, and Jay Farrar’s very ordered harmonies – a world away from the raggedy vocal style of the band’s earlier albums – also root their performance of the song firmly around its origins. However, from the moment Tweedy sings the title lyrics, Uncle Tupelo put their stamp on the song – no quarter is given to sentimentality, as a strange combination of subdued and harsh tones dominates the song from the beginning.

Elsewhere the instrumental playing is often more ornate than the simple call and response feel of Satan. Black Eye is a sad song which uses the subject’s black eye as a device for describing a much deeper pain:

Like his brothers
He emptied himself
And played it safe
Like their father
He wanted to remember
But he almost always
Forgot what he was gonna say

There are no harmonies in this song, and the solo guitar uses the space provided to flick intricately up and down the fingerboard. But Tweedy’s voice sounds detached – from the emotion of the story, but also from the guitar. He sounds like a disembodied story-teller, narrating the tale in a matter-of-fact manner that allows the listener to focus solely on the story itself. In a sense, this concentration on the substance of the song, its message, is what folk music is all about.

The presence of the song Moonshiner on March 1992 suggests that there is value in comparing Uncle Tupelo, at this point in their career, and Bob Dylan. Although Dylan and The Band did not record this traditional southern ballad during the basement sessions, he had recorded a solo version of the song years earlier, in the summer of 1963. Uncle Tupelo cannot have decide to include the song on March 1992 in ignorance of Dylan’s earlier version – however great their knowledge of the original source of such numbers. But the two versions of the song are substantially different. Dylan sings the song with a thin vocal that is nonetheless beautifully knowing, as if he is coming from inside the song’s story, grasping fully what it is saying:

Let me eat when I'm hungry
Let me drink when I'm dry
Two dollars when I'm hard up
Religion when I die
The whole world is a bottle
And life is but a dram
When the bottle gets empty
Lord, it sure ain't worth a damn

Jay Farrar, on the other hand, seems to be using the song to make his own point. In stark contrast with Bob Dylan’s Moonshiner vocal (and also unlike Tweedy’s distant Black Eye vocal), Farrar’s Moonshiner vocal comes across as a temporary phenomenon – but one with much more impact than Dylan’s.

But what is that point that Farrar and Uncle Tupelo are trying to make with this album? What message are they communicating? On first listen, it appears that they are aggressively (there is that punk attitude again) returning folk music to its pre-protest and pre-political roots. This is an oft-repeated point of view: the protest singers of the early sixties were distorting folk music and taking it away from its more traditional, communitarian and personal origins, in order to help convey a broader, political message. This is certainly the view of writers like Greil Marcus, whose book Invisible Republic is based very much on the thesis that it was only in the late sixties, when Dylan and The Band started recording their basement music, that folk music was reclaimed for a more intimate setting.

Well, March 1992 is certainly strong on individual lives and their problems: hunger, family difficulties, and so on. But that is not the full story of the album. March 1992 does cover individuals, but they are constantly set in a broad context, namely the society that surrounds people and without which their stories would be meaningless. For every character on this album who escapes their problems via drunkenness, there is another who is unemployed. The album does not come together as the expression of a political movement, as a lot of the folk music of the early sixties did; but it is a world away from being pre-political or apolitical. Uncle Tupelo have a view which is both subtler and more enlightened: the link between the social and the political within song is a permeable two-way filter. Everything is, or can be, political.

So where is the country music on March 16-20, 1992? It has its moments, and in a manner in some ways reminiscent of Uncle Tupelo’s earlier albums. The album opens with Grindstone, which features some pedal steel that sounds authentic enough, and also the band’s trademark sudden change of tempo. More notable is their cover of the Louvin Brothers’ Atomic Power. Starting out as a fiddle reel, the song develops into a full-blown hoe-down, with more of those structured call-and-response harmonies which mask the song’s serious message:

Will you shout or will you cry
When the fire rains from on high
Are you ready for that great atomic power

In this way, Uncle Tupelo provide a link between older country music and more modern, ‘alternative’, country. Rather than bringing traditional music into the modern era by politicising it, introducing political themes, it sounds more like they bring the anti-traditional back into the country: by taking folk music back into the country, they claim radicalism for country music. This is something that would continue as they made their next album.

In May 1994, years of internal disharmony came to an end when Jay Farrar broke up Uncle Tupelo. What they would have done, what contribution they might have made to country music – or any other kind of music for that matter – is one of those great unknowns. They made only four albums: one in which they experimented with the fusion of country and a sort of garage punk, a second where they perfected that blend, a third in which they stripped it all away to make one of the great contemporary American folk albums, and a fourth, Anodyne, in which they took on a more traditional country-rock sound. With hindsight, it is easy enough to say that this was a very self-conscious swansong, a final nod to the basics from which they emerged, with the songs to match it. But history is never so straightforward and circular: the break-up of the band was a shock to Jeff Tweedy, notwithstanding the fact that it was on Anodyne that he really developed is own independent voice. And in fact, like all of Uncle Tupelo’s albums, Anodyne promises almost as much as it delivers – leaving us to wonder what might have been.

Even the opening notes of the first song, Slate, indicate another shift in emphasis for Uncle Tupelo. While the violin sounds self-assured, strident even though quiet, the strummed guitar for once sounds tentative, as if it is unsure of its place amidst the country instruments which have come along. Up to this point, guitars – whether electric or acoustic – had always dominated the band’s music. What they were playing was partly country, but to a large extent they did without some of country music’s staple instruments – steel guitar, banjo, violin. With Anodyne this ceases to be the case, and the guitars, while still providing the rhythmic base, compete for space with instruments which, while new on the scene, in another sense are a lot older and wiser.

The violin remains to the fore for Tweedy’s first song, Acuff-Rose, his tribute to the legendary country songwriters. The fiddle weaves in and out of the rhythm, which is set by a mandolin, and the result is an infectious-sounding country-rock tune. However, Tweedy’s voice is low in the mix, and the lyrics of the song are similarly insubstantial:

Early in the morning, sometimes late at night
Sometimes I get the feeling that everything's alright

In fact, it is with the return of one of the band’s older styles, the loose and punk-infused rocker The Long Cut, that the album really comes to life. The tempo varies as the song stops and starts, and the simple chords and drum and electric guitar driven rhythm fit nicely with Jay Farrar’s typically direct lyrics:

I've been searching and you've been gone
Out looking for the shortest path to the one that you're on
And I've already seen all I wanna see
Come on, let's take the long cut
I think that's what we need

However, this song is the exception rather than the rule, and as the country band grows slightly, with a banjo joining the fray and the harmonies spreading, the middle section of Anodyne flows unlike on any other Uncle Tupelo record. Give Back the Key to My Heart, Chickamauga, New Madrid, Anodyne and We’ve Been Had all sound fully-formed, something which cannot often be said of Tupelo songs. Their cover of Give Back the Key…, a Doug Sahm classic, is a showcase for Farrar’s soaring vocals, which as ever frequently switch between confident and well-toned on the one hand and downright odd on the other. But this number is most important for being the site, four tracks in, of the final marrying of the riffing violin and the more familiar free-and-easy drums. In a sense, this is what this album needed if it was going to work, because with that blend, we know we have an Uncle Tupelo country album rather than a plain country album.

We’ve Been Had is another important song on Anodyne. With the balanced slightly shifted away from country-punk and towards something a little more subtle and a lot more authentic-sounding (from a country perspective), that representative blue-collar feel of their first two albums largely disappears; also gone are the sometimes explicitly ideological lyrics of March 1992, which would sound incongruous against Anodyne’s musical backdrop. But We’ve Been Had shows that Uncle Tupelo were keen to retain a political element – a protest element – to their work. Their mode of expression, however, has changed, as they eschew both social commentary and ideological polemic in favour of a more pragmatic political approach, reflecting cynically on the inability of the Democrats and Republicans to be straight with them.

Towards the end of Anodyne, the song High Water perhaps provides some sort of explanation for the break up of Uncle Tupelo. Or if this is stretching the laws of cause and effect too much, it is certainly fair to say that, in retrospect, the lyrics and sound of High Water take on a real poignancy, if not a larger significance. Backed only by his own strummed acoustic guitar – such a feature of the band’s later work – and an achingly beautiful pedal steel, Farrar eloquently describes his frustrations, his inability to control his own direction, to overcome obstacles, to do what he wants to do:

I can see the sand and it's running out
It was only circumstances
But it's the difference
It gets in the way
No race is run in this direction
You can't break even
You can't even quit the game

Faced with what he saw as an untenable situation within his band, and his powerlessness to get out altogether, Farrar chose a third option – probably the only other possibility available to him – and broke the band up. Whether knowingly or inadvertently, in so doing, Farrar directed Jeff Tweedy away from country-rooted music and towards the ever-increasingly ambitious experimental and melodic music that Tweedy and his band Wilco would become famous for – far more famous than anything Farrar himself had ever done or would ever do. For his part, Jay Farrar formed Son Volt, a band which would be entirely directed by him. Their music relied heavily on two of Uncle Tupelo’s core styles – the confident and authentic country sound epitomised (somewhat ironically given the song’s absolutist lyrics) by High Water, and the jumpy, unnerving punk/country combination that was perfected on Still Feel Gone.

But other than Wilco and Son Volt, what was Uncle Tupelo’s legacy to popular music in general, and country music in particular? Starting with the most obvious things, they left us with a decent debut album full of promise, and then three truly great albums, each one radically different from the last. Still Feel Gone was the loose and breathless realisation of what No Depression had tried to achieve; March 1992 was a fascinatingly powerful and meaningful acoustic showpiece; and Anodyne was a magnificent fusion of new country and old country.

More generally, it was possibly the order in which they made their albums which has been so crucial to the ‘alt-country’ movement. The band clearly had country leanings, but from the very outset they took a garage band approach and laced their songs with punk attitude. The first two albums give the impression that whenever they were in doubt, they turned up the volume and gave an even greater voice to what they were saying. (This was their approach right up until the end – in their last ever show as a band, they played every song as a fast and furious electric rocker – even the ones which were acoustic and quieter on record, like No Depression and Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down.) It was only later that they brought it back down, making their portentous acoustic album and, ultimately, their country magnum opus, Anodyne. This, for me, is in a way the common thread that runs through much of alternative country music. Its key exponents share a boisterous approach to country music – they are not afraid to play with it, plastering new styles onto it and taking it in fresh directions. But they always bring it back home.

A final word on Uncle Tupelo - that last album was not an end product worthy of book-ending such a short and yet marvellous career. Just as No Depression was followed by a similar but better album, could Anodyne have been followed by an even more worthy epitaph? Sadly, we will never know.