Sinister: Sounds of the New West

[David Howie]

I realise that hardly anybody will read this e-mail; but if you can, please 
do.  This music is important to me: it uplifts my soul.  If just one person 
writes to me and says “Yeh, man.  Totally.” Or “That Willard Grant 
Conspiracy, going to see them next month”, I’ll know that I’m not alone and 
that will re-assure me that I’m not a teenage freak.  If you don’t want to 
read the ten song synopsis, just read the little blurb at the top and then 
skip to the end; and if you just don’t like me, tell me and I’ll shut up.

Chasing the Normal,

David.

“I don’t know how appreciative Sinister is of Nouvelle Americana (or indeed 
of Classic Americana) but I am firm advocate of its consumption.  Nouvelle 
Americana, a re-drawing of the musical topography of America, a reinvention 
of its great traditional musics and the creation from those traditions of 
something vibrant and new and unclassifiable.  These artists’ music is the 
sound of the familiar made strange, compelling and alien in the classic 
manner of Roxy Music.  While the turgid abject drizzle that passes for 
current UK rock and indie persists on dampenening us all, majestic music 
floods out of America like a raging torrent.  For hairy-arsed rock’n’roll in 
the great tradition of Springsteen and The Replacements, there hasn’t been a 
more incendiary (apoplectic) record in the last 5 years than Marah’s Kids in 
Philly.  But what I, and an increasing number of listeners, keep coming back 
to time and again is that part of the American music landscape that is 
variously described as new, insurgent or alternative country, but which is 
increasingly ill-served by such a strict definition – much of the music 
being made under this journalistically-convenient label bearing only the 
most passing resemblance to what has traditionally passed for country.  
Hence the current preference for describing the type of music I love as 
Americana, which at least suggests something of the breadth and variety and 
innovation of that loose amalgamation of bands and artists whose work falls 
broadly into this category.  This is music as a torrent of brilliance, 
rather than a trickle of mediocrity, a flash-flood of genius not a puddle of 
piss-poor prattlings from a bunch of bedwetters.

I present by way of an introduction a ten song cycle which perfectly 
illustrates the nature of this guerrilla breed of Americana by carefully 
definining its ambit.


1. Neko Case & Her Boyfriends – ‘Twist The Knife’

The sexiest member of the Americana cast, with a penchant for leaving the 
house without frilly undergarments, and (apparently) not shy in telling you 
so.  The ever astute John Peel picked up on this track from Neko’s 2nd album 
(and no matter what Nick tells you, this is her best album) months before it 
was ever scheduled for release here, proclaiming it the best track he’d ever 
heard then playing it back-to-back in quick succession.  Co-written with 
Ryan Adams and Mike Daly from Whiskeytown, it is an achingly gorgeous ballad 
with ringing guitars from her boyfriend and Travis Good from The Sadies.  
And there are another 11 tracks this good on her album.  Born on the same 
day and in the same town (Tacoma) as Patsy Cline, y’know (but not in the 
same year, obviously.)

2. Whiskeytown – ‘Factory Girl’

At a recent gig in London a dishevelled young Ryan Adams pleaded with the 
audience to stop requesting this track, choosing instead to sate their 
hunger with his reading of Oasis’ perennial classic ‘Wonderwall’.  Oh dear.  
With echoes of Uncle Tupelo, this track elides the uncomfortableness created 
on the 2nd album by the fact that the band come uncomfortably close to 
sounding like The Eagles.  Oh dear, again.  Like most of Adams’ songs it 
aches with heartbreak; the girl lost Adams can only watch from a distance as 
the girl expurgates all the traces of Adams by working the dirt away.  Sung 
and stalkerly prose, the song touches on two of the main themes of 
Americana: love (normally lost, normally to another man) and working class 
identity.

3. Uncle Tupelo – ‘High Water’

The story goes like this, see.  Four friends bored, listening to punk and 
country decide to form a band; melding the two styles into a fiercesome 
fusion, Uncle Tupelo and alt.country were born.  The founding fathers, Jeff 
Tweedy and Jay Farrar broke away from the group eventually forming new bands 
(Wilco and Son Volt, respectively).  However, the groups formed by the 
break-up were imbued with only a diluted form of concentrated constituent 
parts that went a long way to making Uncle Tupelo so special (i.e., the punk 
sensibilities of Farrar guarded and guided by Tweedy’s country-pop 
leanings).  No space to write about the song now… Sorry.

4. Bruce Springsteen – ‘Atlantic City’

The Nebraska album is Springsteen’s portrait of a wounded and hurting 
America, where the victories are small and hard won, a harsh unforgiving 
place far removed from the shining city on thehill described by Reagan.  The 
protagonist in ‘Atlantic City’ delivers an unsurpassed scathing indictment 
of Reaganomics by way of the lyric ‘I got debts no honest man could pay’.  A 
casualty of Reagan’s America, a nation which, for this individual, is no 
longer the land of promise, unless what is being promised is more suffering 
and disappointment.

5. The Pernice Brothers – ‘Chicken Wire’

Mogadon power-pop.

6. Knife In The Water – ‘Rene’

Austin-based they were formed in 1997, taking their name from a Roman 
Polanski film.  Their sparse intense music is a mutant hybrid of Gram 
Parsons and Spiritualized, and is inspired by classic country and blues, and 
a tradition of murder ballads.  “Country is dangerous music,” said Blount in 
March’s Uncut.  “Blues and country are dangerous because they sit on this 
existential point.  For that music to work, for that kind of music to be 
convincing and sincere, it really has to feel death; you have to feel the 
death that person is singing about.  It’s all about dying and sex.”

7. The Jayhawks – ‘Blue’

This song…
- isn’t as simple as might seem at first glance.
- was written by Mark Olson and Gary Louris, who use words like kids use 
fingerpaint – they make swirls and flourishes and scars, then they turn the 
scene in on itself and make it roll over with some weird filligree along the 
edges.
- wants to crawl inside your consciousness and live with you till next 
autumn.

8. Slobberbone – ‘Gimme Back My Dog’

Texan quartet Slobberbone have never made it easy for themselves.  The name 
itself is hardly endearing, and straddling rock, punk and roots music is 
never easy.  But on their third album, their gmae plan reaps rewards.  
Priding themselves on songs whose narrative lyrics are more akin to short 
stories than standard rock verse, the can also drop in supremely catchy 
numbers like this one, which uses humour to draw you into a song that is 
deceptively, an emotionally-charged post-mortem of a failed relationship.

9. The Handsome Family – ‘A Beautiful Thing’

Modern country classics inspired by the Hindu creator/destroyer god Shiva, 
and Oscar Wilde’s contention that “Each man kills the thing he loves” are 
rare indeed.  But the Handsomes are a rare breed.  Rennie’s lyrics may take 
labyrinthine mythology and literary sources as their starting point, but ‘A 
Beautiful Thing’ is a diamon-sharp example of how she refines them into 
scrupulously detailed tragi-comic alcohol-laced lament.  ‘A Beautiful 
Thing’? For once, the title doesn’t lie.

10. Slaid Cleaves – ‘Horshoe Lounge’

There was only one place for Mr Cleaves when he outgrew Portland – Austin, 
Texas, roots rock mecca and unofficial capital of alt.country.  When he’s 
not out touring you’ll normally find him propping up the lonely end of the 
bar in the Horseshoe lounge, or a bar very like it, peeling the label off 
his beer, and putting down quarters in the queue for the pool table.  One of 
the leaders of Americana’s new guard of singer-songwriters.


Thank you,

David.

PS  I couldn’t resist putting Springsteen in there, even though he is hardly 
Nouvelle.  The man is sorely ignored by many people, blindly prejudiced to 
the fact that he wasn’t always AOR.

PPS Sorry to go on at inordinate length.  I’ve ripped some quotes from 
places, I can’t be bothered attributing them all (so if it sounds good, I 
probably didn’t write it).”

_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
        +---+  Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list  +---+
     To send to the list mail sinister at missprint.org. To unsubscribe
     send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to
     majordomo at missprint.org.  WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister
 +-+       "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper           +-+
 +-+  "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+
 +-+    "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000     +-+
 +-+  "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000  +-+
 +-+               Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa                 +-+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+