Tag Archives: Sturgill Simpson

Reviews

Album Review: Tyler Childers–Purgatory

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Rating: 8.5/10

If you’ve been living in blissful ignorance of Tyler Childers and his music, I invite you to rectify this, and quickly, so that when he blows up as he rightfully should, you can say you were ahead of the curve and that you knew about this cool eastern Kentucky native before it was cool. I am not claiming to be one of the many people bombarding sites like Saving Country Music asking for updates on Childers for months and years prior to this release; in fact, I had never heard of him either until that voice came belting out of Colter wall’s album on “Fraulein” in May. It’s rare that someone can make such an impression with just a verse, but that killer voice and the unique, sort of raspy, weathered tones and cracks, especially in Tyler’s higher register, made a lasting impression on this listener.

So we come to Purgatory, and while I wouldn’t say there’s one moment absolutely blowing me away on the level of Tyler’s participation in “Fraulein,” this is a really great album. It’s a record of hard living–drinking, smoking, cocaine, women–and the rare, special women that can turn you from such vices. I wouldn’t say it’s thematic throughout, but it does seem like Tyler is on an endless cycle of screwing up, falling in love, and turning back to vices again after the heartbreak or simply because like he says in “Whitehouse Road,” “it’s a damn good feelin’ to run these roads.” The title track seems to link the subject matter somewhat with its lines like “Catholic girl, pray for me, you’re my only hope for heaven.” It seems that Childers is seeking a place in purgatory because he knows he can’t, or won’t, change, but he believes in hell and wants to avoid it. A lot of this album is delivered in a somewhat lighthearted, offhanded manner, but these underlying themes do seem to be running through it, however unintentionally. It’s also very much a Kentucky record, and although universal in theme, there’s a bit of Tyler’s home in the references and in that accent which certainly adds to this album.

The strongest tracks here are the ones that best showcase that raw power and intensity unique to Tyler Childers and his voice. The opener, “I swear (To God”), is the best example, beginning the record in fine fashion with its spirited narrative and details of waking up with a shiner and not knowing “what all happened.” “Whitehouse Road” also captures some of that quality in his voice, and this one is just an all-around great song. On the softer part of the record, “Lady May” stands out, again because it showcases Tyler well, with just an acoustic guitar and his voice. “Honky Tonk Flame” and “Universal Sound” also stand out because they add something personal to the album and together tell the story of Tyler Childers’ love affair with music. “Universal sound” is a bit ironic because it really doesn’t sound like the rest as far as the production, but the heart in it just makes this song, and you believe every word he’s saying. There’s also a line in this one that seems wistful and adds to those underlying tones, as he reflects that when he was young, music was all he needed; now, “I think about the vices I’ve let take me over time,” as if he wishes he still only needed music.

The one thing that holds this record back slightly is the fact that while I genuinely enjoy every song here, and some are even real standouts, there could be even more. As mentioned before, there’s no single moment on this record that would make an impression on me quite like the moment Childers had on the Colter Wall album, even if the entire record is pretty great as a whole. Some of this is just due to playing it safe with the keys; “Tattoos” could be higher, but it’s probably recorded in this key for the sake of the fiddle, which indeed makes the song. “Born Again” could be higher too. It’s that place in his higher register where the part of Tyler Childers that is so wonderfully unique resides, and I just wish we heard it in more moments on this album. It’s as if Tyler Childers has not yet quite recognized his full potential as a vocalist, and/or it wasn’t given enough consideration during production. Other than that, the production is actually quite excellent, and credit to Sturgill Simpson for that, for making it varied and interesting throughout and keeping it true to Tyler and his sound. As far as these aspects, it’s actually one of the best production efforts I’ve heard in 2017. But back to the vocals…it’s a difficult criticism because there’s nothing really wrong with this record at all–in fact, it’s turning out to be one of my personal favorite listens of the year–but it could have been even more, and that only speaks to the full talent of Tyler Childers. It’s a case of an excellent vocalist who sounds like a good one here, and while I probably shouldn’t complain because the independent scene is strapped for even good vocalists at the moment, I can’t help feeling Tyler is selling himself a little short in that department.

So, overall, this is a fine album, and Tyler Childers is a name you need to know. It’s got variety in production, catchy melodies, and great songwriting throughout. It’s a good balance between the more fast-paced stuff and the love ballads, so even though there’s some similarity in theme, none of it runs together, and it makes for an engaging story. The only real problem with this whole thing is that it could have been even better, and that’s a compliment to Childers and a reflection of the standards to which I have held him. Nevertheless, Purgatory will be one of my most played 2017 albums, and he should be very proud of it.

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Random Reflections

Reflecting on: Sturgill Simpson – High Top Mountain

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Sturgill Simpson is one of my favorite artists. He’s not afraid to experiment with his sound, or to write lyrics deeply grounded in real life. I know that his last two albums are the ones most talked about now, but I thought I’d discuss High Top Mountain. It’s the most country of the three albums Sturgill Simpson has released under his name so far, and it’s the one that introduced me to his music.

Release Date: 2013
Style: Traditional Country
Who Might Like this Album: People who love steel guitar and honest lyrics
Standout Tracks: “Life Ain’t Fair and the World is Mean,” “Water in a Well,” “You Can Have the Crown,” “Hero,” “Some Days”

Reflections: Right away, when “Life Ain’t Fair and the World is Mean” starts off, you know what you’re in for. The song’s fast, unashamedly country in instrumentation, and Sturgill Simpson’s voice is deep and Southern. The album does eventually slow down, but it starts with a whirlwind. When I first heard the beginning of this album, I was instantly in love. This is the kind of music I want to hear. The fact that his band is so talented with guitar, drums, and pedal steel is the icing on the cake. The lyrics, though, are what makes this album stand out. “that’s the way it goes, life ain’t fair and the world is mean” is part of the chorus. Unless you’re leading a charmed life, you can’t help but relate to that.

Things slow down though, for songs like “Water in a Well”, and the writing gets even better. “Our love has all dried up like water in a well” is such a fabulous line. The slower melody and the steel guitar really help to carry this song, too.

My absolute favorite track on this album is “You Can Have the Crown”. It’s like cynicism dialed to ten, and it’s fantastic. The song is fast, with great steel guitar, but the lyrics steal the show, once again. I mean, who says stuff like “They call me King Turd up here on Shit Mountain, if you want it you can have the crown”? Once you’ve gotten over that particular line though, you see that The magic of it is that it surprisingly works. He’s broke, is wife wants a child, and he’s over it all. I love it.

Before you think this album is all doom and gloom, listen to “Hero”. Sturgill Simpson tells the tale of his grandfather who helped him through hard times, and it’s one of the best songs about love for family I’ve ever heard. He praises the generosity of his relative, and his grandfather’s work ethic to provide for his wife. It’s truly a fantastic song. “I know I’ll never find another hero, not another one like him” tells you everything you need to know about this song’s theme.

“Some Days” is a great track too, where he claims “people only wanna be your friend if you’ve got something they need”. Again, this is extremely relatable, as most people in their life have known friends like this. It’s another cynical song filled with frustration, but the thing that keeps the album from becoming too repetitive is that it’s real-life frustration. He frames his stories around people and situations you can picture, or you know that someone else has been in.

I know that this album(and Sturgill Simpson himself), have been talked about endlessly for years. However, I just couldn’t let an opportunity to discuss him and this album pass by. It’s hard for me to pick a favorite album by Sturgill Simpson, but I love how extremely country this one is. His lyrics, whether about love lost, his heroes, or his frustration over life, are extremely well-done. I still come back to this album, and I don’t see that changing any time soon.

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Commentary

Country Music vs. Good Music: Does Genre Matter?

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There has been a lot of talk lately about genre lines and how important they really are. Does it matter that an album sounds country if the lyrics are bland? Is hearing songs rife with fiddle and steel on the radio really an improvement in itself, or have we gone so far that country-sounding music is praised over good music in general? Do we overlook artists like David Nail and Eric Church, both of whom have put out solid country albums in the past year, while propping up more traditional artists like Mo Pitney and William Michael Morgan just because they sound a certain way? All of this boils down to one question: Does genre really matter at all?

Well, that is a difficult question to answer, and there are differing viewpoints on all sides. This is probably the hardest thing I’ve ever had to write because of the sheer number of people who may disagree, and I could ignore it, but I feel inclined to address it, and to be honest with myself and all of you. Honesty is absent everywhere in music right now, and that is one of the driving factors behind Country Exclusive’s existence, so I am going to do my best to provide it.

The simple answer is no, genre doesn’t matter. Good music is good music regardless of who is singing or what genre it is labeled. This is why I gave Carrie Underwood’s Storyteller two different grades–one as a country album, and one as simply an album. It makes a pretty good pop album. Kelsea Ballerini made a decent pop album too and then sent the singles to country radio–and not the best singles either, I might add, but that’s a different story. I wrote that Courtney Marie Andrews defied genre lines in Honest Life, and while not being the most country album, it is the best album I have reviewed to date. Good music can and does come out of every genre, and that is what we should be looking for the most.

To add to that, I want to say that country can be good without having fiddle and steel. I have written in several Red dirt album reviews a sentiment like, “This isn’t the album to buy if you want fiddle and steel,” followed by praise of the album. Red Dirt has a raw honesty that often surpasses genre, and this is evident in the massive sonic difference between Jason Eady and Reckless Kelly, both of whom have produced an inordinate amount of great music during their respective careers. There’s good pop country too, like the aforementioned Carrie Underwood and David Nail. Eric Church produced one of the better albums of 2015, both musically and lyrically, and you won’t find fiddle or steel anywhere on it. I have written a great deal about Maddie & Tae, advising strict traditionalists to give them a chance because they were bringing country back to radio, even if it was pop country. I praised Aubrib Sellers and her debut album which she labeled “garage country.” I’m far from a country purist, ready to criticize something immediately because it isn’t what country “should” sound like.

However, this idea of good music first has been taken too far. William Michael Morgan got a #1 at radio with “I Met a Girl,” which, while indeed lyrically weak, actually sounded country. It’s a step in the right direction as much as the songwriting on Eric Church’s album or the CMA wins of Chris stapleton. Why? Because something actually resembling country can be heard on country radio for the first time in years. But if genre doesn’t matter, why are we even celebrating? Surely Morgan’s “I Met a Girl” is just more shitty music with fiddle and steel.

It’s because truthfully, genre can’t be ignored completely. If you went to a bookstore and found the books arranged in categories of “good” and “bad,” this wouldn’t help you find a book at all. It’s because these terms are subjective. If you wanted to read crime fiction, you would go to the section marked crime fiction, and from there, you could decide which books you wanted to read. If you found romance in the crime fiction section, you would say the book has been put in the wrong place. Of course, there are books that have elements of both and can therefore be classified as both. Now, let’s apply this to music. Crime fiction might be country, romance might be pop, and the two might blend to make pop country. A book containing many different elements might be labeled just “fiction” or “literature”–in music, this could be Americana, with its blending of many styles. There are probably good books in all the different genres, but since you came looking for crime fiction, you aren’t going to be satisfied with a good romance novel. In the same way, if you want to hear traditional country, you won’t find it in the pop country of Carrie Underwood, the country rock of Eric Church, or the Americana of Jason Isbell.

Therefore, when an artist like Morgan comes along, who actually sounds traditional, it’s right to be excited that he’s getting airplay. It’s right to fight to hear more country on country radio–in fact, many of us ran to underground country simply because of the lack of country on country radio. And it’s right to want to see mainstream Nashville and country radio embrace people like Sturgill Simpson and Margo Price. We can run to Americana and give up on the mainstream altogether, but no matter how you look at it, Americana isn’t country. Some of it is excellent, but it still isn’t country. It isn’t the music we fell in love with, the music we miss. We should praise music of substance regardless of how it sounds, but the lack of country on country radio is just an important a problem as the lack of substance in the music.

I daresay the majority, if not all of us, fell in love with country music, at least in part, by listening to country radio. Maybe you grew up with the legends like Haggard and Nelson. Maybe you remember Keith Whitley and Randy Travis, or maybe you miss the sounds of Alan Jackson, George Strait, and Vince Gill. Maybe you’re like me, and the first country you ever heard was the Dixie Chicks. Regardless, you heard all of them because they were played on country radio and available to the masses, just like their pop country counterparts. Pop country has always been around, but never has it replaced and eradicated the traditional as it has in recent years. Wherever your nostalgia comes from, you fell out of love with country radio after it lost the sound and substance you were drawn to. Today, even though the substance is slowly returning, there is still a noticeable lack of the sound. People growing up with country radio today might associate country with Luke Bryan or Thomas Rhett, both of whom lack the sound and the substance. Or maybe they’ll associate country with Carrie Underwood and Eric Church–they will recognize the substance but lose the sound. But until Morgan and Pardi, there hasn’t been a traditional sound being carried to the masses in years. Pop country isn’t a bad thing, but the complete elimination of the traditional is a terrible thing, and a dangerous thing for country as we know it. Therefore, when an artist like Morgan breaks through and gets a #1 single, we should all be celebrating. There is still much work to be done in Nashville, both in sound and substance, but Morgan, and others like him, are bringing hope for everyone who thought traditional country was lost. He’s not pop country, he’s not country rock, he’s not Americana. He’s just country. And I miss country. I fell in love with country. Country is my passion as a fan and my focus as a reviewer. It’s what I’ll always love the most, even though I praise and listen to plenty of good music from other genres, and it seemed, not long ago, that the music I loved would be lost forever in the mainstream. I am nothing but glad that Morgan and Pardi have broken through, and that young people out there listening to country radio once again have the opportunity to fall in love with real country the way I did. As I said, there is still a lot of work to be done, but let’s all recognize this for what it is, a positive step, and be glad for how far we’ve come.

Commentary

Random Thoughts of the Week: The “Random Thoughts” of Merle Haggard and Jason Aldean

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I was actually going to focus this entirely on merle Haggard until today, when I heard of the news of Jason Aldean’s comments. Both Haggard and Aldean shared some very interesting random thoughts on country music this week, and they are made even more interesting in light of each other, so I decided to look at them together.

In an interview on September 9th, Merle Haggard said, of modern country music,

It needs a melody real bad. Not sure what they’ll have to remember. A song is defined as words put to music, but I don’t hear any music. All I hear is the same band, the same sound, and everybody screaming to the ceiling. You stand off at a distance and you couldn’t tell who they are. They are all screaming for one note they can barely get. I don’t find it very entertaining. I wish I did.

This comes after these comments on September 3rd, shared in another interview:

I can’t tell what they’re doing. They’re talking about screwing on a pickup tailgate and things of that nature. I don’t find no substance. I don’t find anything you can whistle and nobody even attempts to write a melody. It’s more of that kids stuff. It’s hot right now, but I’ll tell you what, it’s cooling off.

Now, aside from the obvious fact that Merle Haggard has just said what many of us are thinking, this news is significant because these words have come from a legend. Mainstream outlets are actually reporting it; Merle Haggard is name-dropped in many of today’s songs, and yet he is calling out mainstream country. A more underrated but no less significant fact is that he said it’s “cooling off”–Merle Haggard has been around awhile, and if he says a trend is dying, we all might want to listen to him. Also, Merle points out Sturgill Simpson and
Taylor Swift, of all people, as being current artists he respects. Sturgill Simpson, seen by many people on these blogs as our biggest hope, who carries a giant torch for traditional country, and Taylor Swift, who, even though she eventually went pop and made an entire career on “kid stuff” knows how to write a melody better than most of our generation. I love that he called out Swift especially, because as I said, she made a name for herself writing “kid stuff.” By mentioning her name, Merle Haggard is separating himself from those “old” country fans who just want everything to sound like Hank Williams. He’s acknowledging that you can still write “kid stuff” and be relatable; also, as a commenter on SCM pointed out, Taylor was a kid when she wrote “kid stuff,” whereas the bros are adult frat boys.

And speaking of the bros, there’s one that actually agrees with Haggard…well, sort of. Monday, (September 14th), Jason Aldean said this when asked about the lack of female representation in mainstream country music,

I feel like a lot of times female singers, to me, when they’re singing – and I’ll probably kick myself for saying this – a lot of times, it just seems like I can’t distinguish one from the other sometimes if I just listen to them, you know? A lot of times they just sound really similar to me.

Well, cluelessness of that statement aside, it does seem interesting that Aldean hears the sameness in country music that Haggard noted. However, back to the cluelessness–so he can tell all the bros apart? The females are easily more distinguishable–has anyone here heard Kelsea Ballerini sing and assumed it was Miranda Lambert? Then Aldean went on to say:

…you have some that come out like a Carrie [Underwood] or Miranda [Lambert] or somebody like that, that really has a different, distinctive sound to their voice, then it’s like, oh, okay, you can tell them apart all of a sudden. They go on to be obviously big stars, but I think it’s because you can distinguish between them … Listening to country radio, you always have these labels that are putting out new acts and it’s like, you already don’t know who this person is. So what is going to make you remember them?

Oh, okay, so he can tell two females apart on the radio: the two that are played on country radio!!! Here’s a thought; I bet, just maybe, possibly, if he heard more females, he might be able to tell more of them apart! So, in reference to females, his comments become absolutely ridiculous. However, in reference to country in general, it is interesting that both Merle Haggard and Jason Aldean, who come from very different backgrounds and perspectives, have noticed a sameness and lack of individuality in country music. Too bad Jason Aldean’s comments were only directed at women; Merle Haggard made no distinction between men and women. Still, regardless of the intent of Jason Aldean, his comments were no less honest than those of Merle Haggard, and both point to an increasing notice of, and concern for, the lack of individuality in a genre that once embraced it.

Tomato of the Week: Courtney Patton

I am going to turn my attention to the Texas scene for this week’s Female Friday–it seems Texas is just as lacking in female representation as Nashville–and I look forward to featuring Courtney Patton.

Random Country Suggestion: Josh Turner–“Lay Low”

The excellent single from the album that has yet to be released or even announced.

Non-Country Suggestion: Kelsea Ballerini–“Secondhand Smoke”

Kelsea Ballerini is a terrible country artist, and should have never been classified as such. But her debut album actually had some decent pop songs and I put this here for that reason; listen to it as a pop song. It’s a personal song for Ballerini and should not be overlooked because of the atrocious “Dibs,” “Yeah Boy,” etc.

One Last Thought

Congratulations to Lindi Ortega, who won the Canadian Country Music Association (CCMA) 2015 Roots Artist of the Year award Saturday night (September 12th.) This is Lindi’s second win in a row, and hope for females, independent/Americana/roots artists, and music of substance everywhere.