Justin Moore’s 2011 album Outlaws Like Me was declared the worst album ever by Saving Country Music up to that moment in time; a diagnosis I still stand behind with puffed chest. Despite a few moments of respite, Off The Beaten Path is like an expeditionary campaign to discover and exploit every single worn out modern lyrical trope of American country music, and to try and make some new ones.
Somewhat weird, certainly smart-assed, but seriously entertaining, The Defibulators from New York, New York have unleashed their latest album Debt’ll Get ‘Em, ripe for weird looks and rank misunderstanding, but filled with some really good times. The line between where the sarcasm ends and the seriousness begins with The Defibulators is hard to define, and they appear to like it that way.
Tyler Farr’s “Redneck Crazy” isn’t for jilted male lovers looking for solace, it is for socially awkward, introverted, creepy-ass chronic masturbaters that hold a minor in megalomania. This song doesn’t need a rant, it needs a restraining order and ankle bracelet. True rednecks ride their problems out, rub their wounds in the dirt and move on, not whine about them like a panty waist…
Few things get people talking in the independent channels of country music like a Hank3 release. From his neotraditional days in the early 2000’s when he had traditionalists singing his praises, to his magnum opus Straight to Hell from 2006 that saw his punk and metal influences bleed over into a hard country approach, to his last few releases that have become a polarizing subject with many fans….
It’s not that there aren’t some token homages to mark her move into the country format, but overall, except for one song that we will get to in due course, there is very, very little contrast between Feels Like Home and what Sheryl Crow was calling rock for the body of her career. But that doesn’t necessarily paint Feels Like Home, or Sheryl Crow, or her career as bad.
The 22-year-old Texas native Sarah Jarosz symbolizes a victory by so many measures, even before you delve into the substance of her new album Build Me Up From Bones. Build Me Up From Bones is a bold work of progressive bluegrass that showcases young Jarosz’s developed songwriting and adeptness at composition, while not sacrificing the whimsy and fun an album from a 22-year-old must have to be genuine.
No ladies and gentlemen, Western Swing is not dead; not when Davy Jay Sparrow is on the job, doing his level best to keep the distinguished country music sub-genre fresh and fun by forging ahead with his fast-paced and frolicking take on one of country music’s original modes. Sparrow has migrated west from Indiana to Portland, OR and traded in his “Well Known Famous Drovers” for a gaggle of “Western Songbirds”.
Crazy Lonesome Blue comes at you with no frills, offering up a bevy of original songs, a few covers and traditionals, and an all-star cast comprising the Nightlifer’s lineup. It’d take a DNA test to convince me that Danny Kay isn’t a cousin of Lucky Tubb in the way his lonesome drawl with a rounded cadence really pulls the emotion out of the words to a song while pulling the listener’s ear right in.
Luke Bryan’s music has the nutritional value of notebook paper, and is the clinical result of when an entertainer spreads his arms wide in a submissive pose and relents his entire will to the country music industrial complex, saying “Do your worst.” Luke Bryan has no soul. He is more machine than man. He has the integrity of a Guatemalan mule bridge with a squadron of M1 tanks trying to cross it.
With a gift for poetry like Townes Van Zandt, and a penchant for the whimsical, progressive approach to bluegrass akin to John Hartford, Robbie Fulks releases a stunningly entertaining, brilliantly-balanced, deep, yet instantly-engaging comeback album called Gone Away Backward through longtime associates Bloodshot Records.
I know very little about Valerie June, and aspire to keep it that way. A natural mystery swirls around this woman similarly to the tresses emanating from her topside like a living, organic crown. Valerie June seems more apparition than woman—vanishing and appearing in the most random moments like a mythical character born in the mind of an early European troubadour….
Once again a member of the Texas music scene has delivered a song that gives voice and reason to how the rest of us feel. Wade Bowen’s “Trucks” aims its big, diamond-plated bumper at the incessant references to tailgates and four wheel drives in modern pop country songs and slams on the gas.
“Shakespeare Was A Big George Jones Fan: Cowboy Jack Clement’s Home Movies” was made in 2005 to document Jack’s life, and the wild environment swirling around his legendary home studio, the “Cowboy Arms Hotel and Recording Spa.” It is about capturing the spirit of the man—the whimsy that he approached the creative process with.
by all accounts, The Civil Wars latest, self-titled album will be the duo’s swan song. Certain undisclosed, but publicly acknowledged irreconcilable differences have officially split the project in two, and almost kept this album from seeing the light of day altogether. But there’s still this business of 12 new tracks that they’ve released into a world.
Welcome to Saving Country Music’s 2013 Pickathon LIVE blog! We will out at Pickathon all weekend, leaving our thoughts, posting pics, and other bits of information from the fest all weekend. Below you can watch a LIVE stream from the festival’s primary stages, but at any given time, multiple performances might be going on, so check below that in the live blog section for other activities transpiring at Pickathon.
After a six year wait to release an album of original material at the mercy of Curb Records’ career-shattering and sometimes illegal talent retention program, prolonging the release process for artists on their final album with the label nearly indefinitely, the embattled and bruised LeAnn Rimes has finally released “Spitfire.” The chatter around “Spitfire” has been polarizing to darn near bellicose.
Happy 4th of July everyone, and welcome to Saving Country Music’s LIVE blog of the 40th Annual Willie Nelson’s 4th of July Picnic! This year the picnic is being held at the historic Ft. Worth Stockyards in the courtyard outside of Billy Bob’s Texas. In between barbecuing and shooting off Black Cats, please check back as we post pictures, observances, and a play-by-play of the event.
If you would’ve told The Avett Brothers back in 2007 when they released their album Emotionalism that in five years, the best-selling album in all of music would be from a roots band playing acoustic instruments and featuring emotional, singer/songwriter material, they’d probably call you crazy. But that is the power one album can have to launch a formidable music career…
If equality is what Blake Shelton was looking to strike in the video for “Boys ‘Round Here,” then he deserves a big pat on the back. Because anything and everything about this eye-raping edifice to the universal monoculture and hyper-driven consumer excess mixed with vomit-inducing racial tokenism is as equally repulsive as it is embarrassing.
In direct violation of every single rule of country music and the State Department’s South American travel warning, Florida-Georgia line flies down to fake Mexico to participate in a music video that becomes one of the most “WHAT THE HELL?!?!” moments in country music history. This music video is only a couple of quaaludes away from a tasteless Girls Gone Wild installment.
I don’t know how this guy does it. Like a quasar, he’s able to endlessly expel creative musical content unfettered from a seemingly inexhaustible source. It’s not always pretty, it’s not always perfect. But if you pay attention long enough and listen, you will invariably witness something that leaves you awe struck.Before And After The Here And Now is a more mellow project compared to typical Olds albums…
Wagon Wheel” isn’t the “Free Bird” of our generation, it is our generation’s sonic equivalent of inserting a corkscrew into your earhole and giving it a nice good healthy turn. The song, initially stolen from a Bob Dylan demo by Old Crow Medicine Show’s Ketch Secor with a “better to ask forgiveness than permission” approach, officially holds the title of the most ubiquitous song in the history of mankind that nobody’s heard.
Jesus may have turned the other cheek, but he also overturned the tables of the money changers in the temple where they didn’t belong. Just like the Romans of biblical times, these pop country fart tards are foreign occupiers who need to get the hell out of country. I don’t pretend to know what Jesus would do, but if I were him, I’d shove my sandal straight up Thomas Rhett’s ass and tell him he could keep his Michelob Ultra.
The first thing that needs to be pointed out is Red is not country. Red is really the tale of two albums: A gorgeous evocation of human emotions set to enchanting music and delivered in elevated modes, and awful pop shit that leaves you almost embarrassed for Taylor from the sheer obviousness of the ploy. To Taylor’s credit, it is the good stuff that makes up the majority of this album.