Author: David Cantwell
Record Review from web archive January 27, 2009
Mark Olson & Gary Louris – Hawks of a different feather
We each inevitably hear music in the particular ways that we do at least partly because of all that we’ve heard before – because of the context and expectations we bring to new work. For instance, many of us have anticipated Ready For The Flood, an album by Mark Olson & Gary Louris, in light [...]
Column from web archive January 26, 2009
Change is gonna do ya good:
The music of Otis Gibbs
One of my favorite songs of this still-fresh century is Otis Gibbs’ “I Wanna Change It”. From his album One Day Our Whispers, it’s an inspiring sing-along that has only grown in relevance since its release in 2004. Allow me to quote from the song at length. Gibbs sings: There’s been an awful lot of [...]
Column from web archive December 23, 2008
Surveying singles,
whatever they are
The type of music capable of being evoked by the term “No Depression” has been in a more or less constant state of expansion since this magazine’s beginnings. The process began in 1995, of course, with the magazine’s titular appropriation of a 1990 punk rock album by the band Uncle Tupelo. From that starting point, [...]
Record Review from web archive December 18, 2008
Nappy Roots
Across the height and breadth of the so-called Dirty South, there’s no hip-hop act that is dirty and southern in quite the ways that Nappy Roots are. First of all, Nappy Roots are “dirty” not only because they’re “low-down” or “nasty” but because there is literally mud in the tread of their tires and on [...]
Column from web archive December 9, 2008
Roy Orbison’s singular place in rock ‘n’ roll
I remember coming downstairs that morning in 1988 and hearing, on The Today Show I think, that Roy Orbison had died, at age 52 and only just then settling into a career resurgence with his compatriots, the Traveling Wilburys. What I can’t quite get my head around is the fact that, as of this past [...]
Column from web archive November 25, 2008
Ernest V. Stoneman’s proper place in country music history
One of 2008′s best country reissues, maybe even the best, is Ernest V. Stoneman: The Unsung Father Of Country Music, 1925-1934. The 46-track collection is smartly packaged, including a small hard-bound book with lots of photos. But it’s the savvy selection of some too-long-unavailable early sides of Ernest “Pops” Stoneman that excites. There’s his first [...]
Column from web archive November 11, 2008
True Blood misses on the southern thing, but gets the music right
The new HBO series True Blood imagines an America where vampires not only walk among us but are fighting for their civil rights. Though still hated and feared by humans, the undead have at last been able to come out of the casket – all thanks to the development of a synthetic elixir that relieves [...]
Column from web archive October 28, 2008
Man enough: In memory
of Levi Stubbs
Levi Stubbs – the man who sang “Reach Out I’ll Be There” and “Standing In The Shadows Of Love”, “Ask The Lonely” and “Ain’t No Woman Like The One I Got” – died last week. All of those records were credited to the Four Tops, of course, as were “Seven Rooms Of Gloom” and “I [...]
Column from web archive October 14, 2008
Darius Rucker’s rare feat, and what it means
Something remarkable happened on the country charts this past week: A black man, Hootie & the Blowfish singer Darius Rucker, had the #1 entry on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart for the first time since Ray Charles landed there almost a quarter-century ago. Then again, Charles had help. His #1, “Seven Spanish Angels”, teamed [...]
Record Review from web archive October 5, 2008
Browns
The Browns’ biggest hit, “The Three Bells (Les Trios Cloches)”, has to be among the least unexpected, just plain weirdest successes in the annals of country pop. A Swiss ballad first made famous throughout Europe by French chanteuse Edith Piaf, “The Three Bells” is the homely sketch of country boy Jimmy Brown, told via snapshot [...]
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