#alt.country

[weflyonthewall]

Jesse Dayton - De Oosterpoort, Groningen, february  2019

Fuji X-E2s with Fujinon 18mm f/2

[dustedmagazine]

Lucero—Among the Ghosts (Liberator/Thirty Tigers)

Lucero has been on the road for a long time — 20 years as a band — and it shows, both in the tight, roots-rocking, meat-and-potatoes professionalism of this ninth full-length and in a set of songs that longs for home. The rough and ragged opener, with its pulsing guitars and hard-knocking drum beat, gives front man Ben Nichols a setting for a hoarse, full-throated ache for family, in particular a two-year-old daughter whose first word, according to the lyrics, was “goodbye.” Elsewhere the band ranges through history, touching on Civil War Soldiers (“To My Dearest Wife”), Butch Cassidy (“Cover Me”) and a band of Iraq veteran brothers (“Long Way Back Home”) to uncover the loneliness at the base of a rural male experience. The final stomping call to arms, “For the Lonely Ones,” raises power chords and beer cans to the isolated everywhere, in a roadhouse blare of sax and piano and guitar, and Nichols’ voice scraped raw by emotion and empathy and a lifetime of shouting over rock bands.

Depending how you squint at them, Lucero belongs either to the rocking end of the country spectrum, alongside Sturgill Simpson and Jason Isbell, or the country-ish part of the classic rock revival, just a bit to the right of the Hold Steady, Titus Andronicus, Deer Tick and, further back, Springsteen. Either way, their sound — two guitars, bass, drums, keyboards, vox— is basic and elemental, drawing on rock, country and sometimes soul, though Among the Ghosts has less of the Memphis horn sound than previous albums.

Still the force and authenticity of these tunes is undeniable. “Long Way Back Home” follows a shuffling, propulsive locomotive rhythm through desolate scenes of dead-end America, as returning vet brothers drift into a crime that goes very wrong. It is terse and stoic and beautifully tense, with careening arcs of guitar and a bubbling bass line under its no-drama recitation of bad endings.  “Bottom of the Sea” carves out space with an echoey, upward curving guitar riff and keeps time with the tick of cymbals, maintaining a lift even amid lyrics about severe depression. “To My Dearest Wife” makes the case that things have always been bad and lonely for the working man, imagining an interval before a Civil War battle, with a martial drum beat that sounds like a call to arms. And the closer, “For the Lonely Ones,” rocks in a hard and rough and nearly punk way, turning “down and out” into a battle cry and stirring up a defiant ruckus of drums and guitar and piano.  

It's a raucous, macho music that would have made perfect sense in the 1970s, but a lot has happened since then. This straight white American country rock sound, with its blustering riffs and its long-suffering female muses, seems like a throwback now. Sure, the man-on-the-road angst of “Among the Ghosts” is touching and raw, but as Nichols wraps his gravelly voice around lines like “In the west the sky, goes darker, back east the sun will rise, back home my wife and daughter, don’t know where I’m tonight,” you wonder if he’s heard about cell phones. And later, in “Back to the Night,” with the long, spoken word interval about a woman at home whose eyes are full of sadness, you wonder again why the women in country songs are always so miserable, and whether it, maybe, has anything to do with the men in country songs.

Jennifer Kelly

[insideoutsock]

My 365 favourite albums

90. Songs:Ohia - Magnolia Electric Co

Listen if you like: Jason Molina

This is the album where Jason Molina turned away from the bleak sound of Song:Ohia and transformed into Magnolia Electric Co, being closer to alt.country. 

Fourth entry in this list by the way. Look here, here and here. 

[weflyonthewall]

American Aquarium - TakerRoot Festival, De Oosterpooort, Groningen, november 2018

Fuji X-E2s and Fujinon 56mm f/1.2

[christmasunderground]

The Bret Tobias Set "For Christ's Sake" (2025)

Self ReleasedBuy: Bandcamp Hey! Is The Bret Tobias Set lining up to be a yearly Philadelphia Christmas tradition? Can I manifest this? We’ll see… I wrote about The Bret Tobias Set’s excellent 2023 cover of Everything But the Girls’ “25th December” earlier this year, with what might be one of my shortest reviews of recent memory. I don’t know why I get sheepish about that kind of stuff – I just…

The Bret Tobias Set "For Christ's Sake" (2025)

[christmasunderground]

Todd Snider "Happy New Year" (2006)

New Door RecordsBuy: Apple Music | Amazon MP3 | Dan Snider Website (Purple Version) I remember listening to Todd Snider back in high school, hearing “My Generation (Part 2)” and loving his thoughtful, clever, funny songwriting. I believe my art teacher Kate hipped me to him. That was probably most folks’ introduction to Todd — the song, not my teacher Kate, of course! It is an incredibly clever,…

Todd Snider "Happy New Year" (2006)

[northwestfive]

The Felice Brothers Cover : Her Eyes Dart Round

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[northwestfive]

The West That Money Couldn't Buy : Brenn Hill cover

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