Monthly Archives: May 2017

Reviews

Album Review: John Moreland–Big Bad Luv

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Rating: 8/10

Yeah, it took me quite a long time, several listens, and a detour in between to discuss the music of Kody West and Colter Wall before I could accurately put into words how I feel about this album. And that’s due to the sheer talent of John Moreland, the fact that his lyrics are on quite another level and hard to digest, let alone put onto paper, and generally that I felt this album is very good and deserved better words, even if written later, rather than words which were forced out just after the release. It’s always good to see success and talent coming out of my home state, and Tulsa’s John Moreland definitely has the talent–and a portion of the success. But this record could, and should, be the one that brings him to a new level of success and prominence.

I’ll say first that this album isn’t really country, although you’ll hear some country touches, like the occasional steel in “It Don’t Suit Me (Like Before)” or the lively harmonica in the opener, “Sallisaw Blue.” It’s not really Red Dirt or country rock either, like so much music coming out of this region. It’s closer to Americana, with lots of nice piano and acoustic guitar brightening up the record, and actually the Apple Music description sums it up well: “Heartland folk rock, warm and tough like weathered denim.” “Warm” is the perfect word to describe the melodies; Moreland’s past work has been largely dark/depressing, but there’s definitely a happier tone to this album, perhaps due to Moreland’s recent marriage and current state of mind. regardless, the melodies will stick with you, and it’s that detail which elevates this record from something on the more boring singer-songwriter side to something more relatable because those melodies will get stuck in your head, and you’ll find yourself coming back and listening. It’s an album that works its way into your heart slowly, a bit like Jason Eady’s latest record. And credit to John Moreland for giving equal attention to his melodies–many Americana/folk projects suffer from the same problem of considering melody secondary to lyrics, and thus, while maybe telling a great story, often lose that story in a forgettable melody.

And speaking of those lyrics…I already said they’re on another level, and I can’t really put into words even now the poetry of John Moreland. As I say, you come back to this album for the melodies, but the more you listen, the more new things you unravel in the words, and you start to find lyrics that could rival the genius of even Jason Isbell–yes, that’s what I said. I’ll say that “Love is Not an answer,” accompanied by some of that beautiful piano I mentioned, and the acoustic “NO Glory in Regret” stand out as fantastic pieces of songwriting, but you just have to hear them to fully appreciate them, and that’s why I struggle to put the music of Moreland to paper; my words can’t do it justice, and it loses something in trying.

So after all this praise, why am I giving this album an 8? Well, it goes back to relatability. With all that deep songwriting, sometimes it’s just not accessible/relatable. It’s still hard to rate this because some people are going to absolutely love this album and call it a genius piece of art. Other people are going to hear it and say, “It’s good, but I can’t get into it.” Still others are probably still going to see it as boring despite its charming melodies and instrumentation. This is one of those times that I can see all angles, and this 8 is the best I can come up with as both a fair critic and an honest music fan. I do think it’s an album that grows on you, and people that buy it and listen to it multiple times will get more from it than people who stream it once and say it’s not for them. It took me lots of listens to fully appreciate it, and it’s still getting better. And that, as I say, speaks to the talent of Moreland, that his work improves with time.

So, would I recommend this? If you like older rock or folk rock or Americana, absolutely. There’s a beauty in these melodies and lyrics that is special. I’m not sure your average person looking for strictly country gets into this quite as much, but this is still real and raw and rootsy, so it just depends on your musical tastes. As I say, it won’t relate to everyone because of the sheer complexity with which John Moreland writes his songs, but it’s an album worth checking out, and it keeps getting better each time you hear it.

Standout Tracks: “Love is Not an Answer,” “It Don’t Suit Me (Like Before),” “Sallisaw Blue,” “NO Glory in Regret,” “Amen, So Be It,” “lies I Chose to Believe”

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Reviews

Single Review: Chris Young’s “Losing Sleep”

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Rating: 3/10

All I can say is, what an ironic title.

Maybe it’s something to do with the last name Young–because this reminds me of the entirety of Brett Young’s latest effort in that it’s forgettable, boring, and yes, could put me to sleep. Let’s even forget about the beats, the trend-chasing, and the fact that Chris Young’s deep, traditional country voice is being used to produce something as non-country as this–because those problems pale in comparison to the fact that I’ve listened to this song three times and can’t remember a single line beyond “we’re winning when we’re losing sleep,” and I can only recall that because it has to be the laziest hook in mainstream country songwriting ever. Not the worst, but definitely the laziest. The actual song is an attempt at seduction, which, I might add, Chris Young has the voice for. That is what takes the song down from a mediocre, inoffensive 5-ish to a 3; it’s the lazy lyrics, Chris Young’s obvious boredom, and the general lack of charisma and care by an artist who can pull this off that bring this song down. IN short, the problem is that Chris Young is better than this in general, and better than this at these types of songs–see “Tomorrow,” and even if you found it slightly douche-leaning, see “Lonely Eyes.” At least he sounded engaged during that song, even if it boils down to being another song about picking up a girl in a bar. The one thing I can say for this song is that it’s inoffensive. IN fact, it really doesn’t evoke any feeling at all.

I could have included Chris Young in my recent piece about artists I wished would get back to themselves, but I honestly forgot about Chris Young because after some strong singles, instead of turning into a trend-chaser who began releasing atrocious music, he took the safe route with his last album and released one of the most disappointing, bland records I’ve ever listened to. That’s arguably worse than being atrocious; at least horrible music is remembered. I had hoped that Chris Young would return to more meaningful songs and realize more of his potential, but if this new single is any indication, his next album will be just as forgettable–and even less country.

Written by: Chris Young, Chris DeStefano, Josh Hoge

Reviews

Album Review: Colter Wall (self-titled)

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Rating: 9/10

Eleven miles west of Dodge City, Kansas, on West Highway 50, otherwise in the middle of nowhere, there is a boardwalk and a historical marker to denote the place where over a century ago, wagons passed through on the Santa Fe Trail. If you stand there on that boardwalk in that relentless prairie wind and look out over the land, you can still see the ruts these wagons drove into the ground as countless people made their way to Santa Fe, and though so much time has passed, their stories are still etched into the prairie and echoing out of the past. Though you stand there in the 21st century, a piece of 1872 is still with you in those ruts, and there’s something about that that’s powerful and timeless.

It’s that same sort of feeling you get when you press play on this record, and Colter Wall starts to sing, with often little else but his guitar and some well-placed steel or drums to accompany a voice reminiscent of Johnny Cash and stories that seem to come pouring out of another place and time. From the opening words to “Thirteen silver dollars,” where we are invited in with, “It was a cold and cruel evening, sneaking up on speedy Creek, I found myself sleepin’ in the snow,” it’s an album of rambling and searching, more story than song, more folk than country, and more past than present. That remarkable voice will draw you in and remind you of earlier days in country, but it takes more than that to sell stories like these, especially in these modern days. It’s the conviction and emotion in these words that keeps you listening and makes it more than just a singer with a great, throwback voice, and rather a storyteller taking you on a journey. This particular journey includes hopping trains and sleeping in lonely motel rooms, and culminates in prison–and that’s just the front half. This half of the record ends in fine fashion with “Kate McCannon,” as Colter Wall sings from his prison cell about meeting “the prettiest girl in the whole damn holler” and then subsequently “courting” her and murdering her after finding her with someone else. This song builds and builds until the climactic line, “I put three rounds into Kate McCannon,” and you can feel all the pain and guilt of the song and whole first half of the album in that line.

I separate the album into halves because that’s exactly how Colter Wall presents it, and between the halves, there’s another slice of the past, as a DJ on the “Old Soul Radio show” is supposedly debuting Colter’s album, complete with static and background noise before he “flips the record over.” I can see how people would love or hate this moment, but it does serve to add another vintage element to the album, and it also breaks the record nicely into two parts, providing a break after the intensity of “Kate McCannon.”

The back half of the album is just slightly weaker, at least for me, as I’m still not really getting into the song “You Look To Yours.” If there’s any filler on this record, it would be this song. Here we have two nice covers, Townes Van Zandt’s “Snake Mountain Blues,” which serves nicely as the opener to the second half, as well as the excellent “Fraulein,”–originally done by Bobby Helms, but also previously performed by Townes–featuring Tyler Childers. These two are excellent together; Childers adds some high harmony and some great contrast to Wall’s bass, and they should sing together more. Townes Van Zandt is a fitting artist for Colter Wall to cover on this album because his songs work well with the images and stories portrayed here. Some of the best songwriting on the record can be found on “Transcendent Ramblin’ Railroad Blues” and “Bald Butte.” The former is more of, well, exactly what the title says, but this one stands out for its lines like, “If I don’t leave here tomorrow, I believe I’ll blow out my brains. But either way, there’ll be sorrow, you won’t be seeing me again.” The latter is a story straight out of the past, as we are told the tale of Henry, who had his horse and rifle stolen by some Southerners and sought revenge, only to be shot. The details and imagery in this one are impressive.

I mentioned before that there’s not much to accompany Colter Wall here usually except his guitar. Sometimes there’s some steel and sometimes some drums, which certainly do a lot for “Bald Butte.” For people that knew Colter wall before this and enjoyed his debut EP, Imaginary Appalachia, this could be a good or bad thing–that EP had much more interesting instrumentation and production, often with lively fiddles. I think some of that could have helped this record in places, and having Dave Cobb as the producer is certainly to blame for this. Having said that, personally, for this particular record, I think Dave Cobb handled it excellently, getting out of the way of Colter wall and his stories and letting them speak for themselves. I do think that going forward, Colter will have to expand his sound–we saw with Stapleton’s record that it wasn’t as interesting production wise as Traveller. But as far as this record goes, I don’t have any major complaints with the production. And for me, it’s actually quite an improvement from Imaginary Appalachia for Colter Wall himself, as on that EP, I felt he was singing too often in higher registers; this record shows off much of his lower range which suits his voice, as well as these songs. I would say that while he may be still developing his sound and style, he’s also come quite a long way in that aspect on this album. So I agree the concerns of production are valid, but something we should hold off on for the 21-year-old Wall until his next project.

There’s also the concern that by singing in this throwback, sometimes dated style that Colter Wall could develop into a niche performer, and that’s also something I’d argue it’s too early to speculate about. If it turns out to be the case, I’m proud to be one of the throwback types that enjoys this music. if not, I think there’s a conviction and heart in Colter that, combined with that kind of voice, can impact people on a much larger scale. I see a tremendous amount of potential in this 21-year-old Canadian folk singer, and only time will tell if he lives up to that potential. For now, this is a pretty incredible album, and rather than speculating on Colter’s future, we should all just go listen to it.

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Commentary

What Happens When you Take Women Out?

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I debated whether or not I should write this piece because it’s really quite personal, and I’m not sure if it will be relatable or have a point when I’m done here, but it’s still on my mind after a couple of days, so I’ll try my best to be articulate as I express my thoughts.

The inspiration for this piece came after the news that Miranda Lambert’s “Tin Man” fell from #38 on the Billboard Country Airplay chart this week to #42, despite its sales and the ridiculous spike after her ACM performance. Now, as I’ve seen a lot of people point out, Miranda has never had the greatest treatment at radio anyway. There’s also the fact that “Tin Man” is stripped down, not necessarily radio-friendly, and quite traditional, so it’s got those strikes against it–although “The House That Built Me” had all of these characteristics and still gave her a #1 hit. But the glaring fact is, a big part of this simply has to do with the fact that Miranda Lambert is female, and in 2017, despite all the think pieces and supposed inclusion of more women by the country awards shows, females are still systematically ignored on country radio and by the country industry as a whole–and if you think these awards shows really want to include more women, why are there fewer nominees for ACM Female Vocalist of the Year? Sure, more women have been signed to major labels recently, but they’re not generally given the same chances to succeed; there’s a quota for females on country radio, and Miranda Lambert and Carrie Underwood are filling it. And now it looks like Lambert will be replaced by Kelsea Ballerini, who is as non-country as Sam Hunt and the bros.

Keith Hill said back in 2015 that radio should “take women out.” The more infamous part was calling them tomatoes, but the more alarming part was taking them out. Lindi Ortega said then, “I can’t begin to describe to you how my blood boils at those words. Erase us, delete us…make it so we don’t exist.” And that’s what country radio is systematically doing–taking the female perspective so completely out that it’s shocking to imagine a woman’s point of view beyond the “girl” on the tailgate. Maren Morris recently spoke about this when she wrote that women in country can’t be sexual in their songs–they are supposed to be pretty and desirable but not write about their own desires. That inspired another piece which I haven’t yet written and have many conflicting feelings about writing–mostly because so many people I know will read it, and Maren Morris is a stronger person than I am–but it’s a more specific issue deriving from the same problem: take women, and their perspective, out. “Girls” are okay–and that’s why Kelsea Ballerini’s music can succeed on country radio; that, and that it isn’t country and seldom has substance.

So what actually happens when you take women out? I could go on about how it takes away their perspective in the mainstream, or how it leads to radio being one-sided and favoring music that marginalizes them, but I’m going to answer it from a personal place instead. I grew up in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, and one of the first country records I ever owned was a Dixie Chicks album, Wide Open Spaces. I fell in love with their music because it was country, but also because I could sing it and relate to it. They were women, and what they sang about appealed to me. I loved Martina McBride and Faith Hill, and later Miranda and Carrie. I sang an inordinate amount back then, so I will say that part of the appeal in their albums was that I could sing them; their ranges matched mine. But more than that, I related to them. I enjoyed plenty of music by male artists–and still do–but I naturally gravitated toward more women artists. Even today, on this blog, I can go back and look at the very few tens I’ve awarded–it’s a subconscious thing, but more of those records are by women. They have nothing in common in production, style, lyrics–but tens are set apart from nines for me because they can connect emotionally, and I have connected emotionally with more women in the history of running this blog, it seems.

The point of all this is that I fell out of love with country radio for the same reasons you all did; it lost its sound and its substance almost overnight. More than that, here in Oklahoma, radio killed Red Dirt around the same time. It had once lived on our radio stations along with mainstream music, but things like the rise of iHeart helped to destroy it. Even more than all of that, though, I became disenchanted with country radio because of the lack of women. I didn’t know then that there was all this independent music floating around just waiting to be discovered, and all of a sudden, I couldn’t relate to anything on the radio or sing along with any of the records. I mentioned that I sang, and I will now say that I grew up wanting to be those women. And I don’t think it’s even possible to do that now. You can’t turn on country radio and hear Miranda lambert as a young girl and say, “I want to sing like her” or get that passion for country music like I did. It’s the same thing I said in my piece about genre awhile back, that it makes me sad that your average young person can’t just turn on the radio and find and fall in love with traditional-sounding country. But even that’s starting to make its way back in, (slowly), with Stapleton, Morgan, Pardi, Midland…while the women are being pushed further and further out. Sure, there are plenty of them out there if you know where to look, but you have to love country first before you go seeking out Ashley Monroe and Angaleena Presley and Margo Price.

And I’m not saying a girl can’t fall in love with country from listening to men, or anything close to that; I’m only saying that in my case, I don’t think I’d be sitting here writing this if I hadn’t heard all those women on country radio back then, and if country radio’s systematic ignoring of females keeps even one girl from falling in love with this wonderful genre, then that’s the real problem, and the real danger of taking women out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12cUm2OwnPs

Reviews

Album Review: Kody West Shows Promise on Debut Album Green

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Rating: 8/10

Sometimes, all of us get sick of this whole drama-infused reviewing music thing. There’s pressure from other critics, publicists, readers…it’s hard to find words for each new album, to express your opinion when you know it’s heavily in the minority, to stand out in the crowd of other people trying to stand out doing the same thing, and it’s understandable why lots of blogs have shut down or gone on hiatus recently. And then, out of the blue, you find some new, cool music from a guy like Texas country artist Kody West, and you remember the reason you do this in the first place–to bring people’s attention to artists like this, and maybe help to give them the same cool discovery you just experienced. It’s a joy like no other, and for me, there’s a certain, more specific joy when it comes to the Texas and Red Dirt music running through this region I call home, and when I get to present new and promising artists rising up in this scene. And “promising” is perhaps the best word to describe the debut album by Kody West. Green.

One of the definite high points on this record is the instrumentation. Sonically, it’s much like the early records of the Eli Young Band, flawlessly merging country and rock, traditional and contemporary, into something real and raw, yet still quite new and refreshing, that indefinable thing that seems to be the hallmark of Texas and Red Dirt music. This record sets itself above many other similar-sounding ones, however, in that there is a variety. “The Prayer” is straight-up country, and there’s lots of steel guitar in “IN the Morning” as well. Then there are more rock-leaning songs like the ever-building “Million Miles” and the title track, which except for its heartbroken lyrics about a couple whose love has burned out over the years, is really anything but country. The variety in instrumentation throughout the album speaks to West’s desire to correctly interpret the songs and the lyrics, and for the most part, that works very well. It also serves to provide something for everyone, from those who like the more country side of Texas music, to those who prefer it to sound like hard rock with honest lyrics.

Speaking of lyrics, there are some strong standouts here too. I mentioned “Green,” the title track, and it is probably the most well-written song here, belying Kody’s twenty-one years as it paints a picture of a couple sleeping in different rooms and miserable after many years together–“it takes a long time to forget what caused a lifetime of regret, and the days slip slowly by, we can run, but we can’t hide.” “Ledges” immediately follows this, as West tries to be a better man; his vocals work well with the instrumentation and lyrics to capture the desperation in both these songs. Another place where the instrumentation and lyrics match perfectly is the dark, slightly sinister “Ogygia,”–the imagery in this one is just great, as West sings about the shadow that follows him around and haunts him. It’s a little hard to explain this in writing, as it relies on metaphors and that dark vibe; it’s really just one you should hear because it’s one of the best on the record. “Million Miles” merges the instrumentation and lyrics well also, although after all that building, when the electric guitars finally do come bursting forth, you wish the solo had gone on longer. One of the more country moments that stands out is “Love me Too,” where West wonders if a woman would return his love–there’s more of that excellent steel guitar here as well.

This is a debut, and it does suffer a little from some of the same things that often plague debut records–you can tell Kody West is still trying to develop his sound and stand out in the ever-growing Texas scene. I think he’s well on his way to doing that with the interesting melodies and variety in instrumentation, but tracks like “For the Last Time” and “IN The Morning” feel more like representations of the style, as opposed to representations of West–I actually quite enjoy the former despite this, but I don’t hear the same passion in these that I do on other tracks. The latter also feels a little underdeveloped lyrically, even though it’s got a lot of that aforementioned steel guitar. “Melody,” the album closer, also feels somewhat out of place, as if it were thrown in as an afterthought. Again, I enjoy this song and its message of faith, but it really doesn’t go with the rest of the album or add much to it.

If you were looking for something new and fresh in Texas country, I suggest starting with Kody West. If you like more country rock instrumentation, this album is definitely a great place to start. There are some nice lyrical moments too, especially on the title track, “Ledges,” and “Ogygia.” This record shows a lot of promise for Kody West–it’s not perfect, but it’s a debut, and Kody West is a name you should keep your eye on.

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