Just a regular guy, gettin' back to what he does best!
Artiste: Steve Earle
Album: The low highway
Nationality: American
Year: 2013
Label: New West
Genre: Country/Folk
Tracks:
The low highway
Calico County
Burnin' it down
That all you got?
Love's gonna blow my way
After Mardi Gras
Pocket full of rain
Invisible
Warren Hellman's banjo
Down the road, pt II
21st century blues
Remember me
Chronological position: Thirteenth album
Familiarity: Oh, everything! I've all his albums and am a big fan. Oh, you want the names, do you? Okay then: "Guitar town", "Exit 0", "Copperhead Road", "The hard way", "Jerusalem", "El corazon", "I feel alright", "Transcendental blues", "The revolution starts now", "Washington Square serenade", "I'll never get out of this world alive", "Townes", Train a-comin'"...
Interesting factoid: This is the first Steve Earle album credited to "Steve Earle and the Dukes and Duchesses" --- guess Steve likes to be seen as an equal opportunities employer!
Initial impression: Now
that's the Steve Earle I've been waiting to hear!
Best track(s): The low highway, That all you got?, Burnin' it down, Love's gonna blow my way
Worst track(s):
Comments: Thirteen, unlucky for some? For me, it was Earle's last album that was the first real let-down since "Jerusalem", the first time I really felt like he had failed to reach the high standards he had set for himself over three decades, and which I continue to hold him to. My main gripe with "I'll never get out of this world alive" was that it seemed to eschew the rock for folk, the hard electric guitar for the acoustic, and made, for me, of Earle a pale shadow of the man I had fallen (musically) in love with over such albums as "Copperhead Road", "El Corazon" and "I feel alright". I worried this might be a new direction he was heading in, doing a Bob Dylan in reverse; changing from hard electric country rock to more low-key folky material, perhaps reflecting his advancing age? The title of the album didn't, I have to say, inspire confidence that this was not the case.
Nor indeed the opener, and title track, which is indeed an acoustic country/folk number, but somehow seesm to have more teeth in it than almost all of the tracks off the previous album combined. A lot of weary anger and resignation in the song, but still, it
is acoustic. So were my fears confirmed? Well no, not really. The very next track kicks out the stays with almost a return to the style of "Guitar Town" and "Exit 0", his first two albums, and from then on it just really gets better.
Burnin' it down has a sense of
The devil's right hand on it, while
That all you got? faces the world squarely, daring it to try to lay him low. He's joined on this by his wife Alison Moorer I believe, and there's some great fiddle and accordion giving the song a feel of
The Galway girl in its celtic flavour. Great rocking guitar too, good to hear it again.
Yeah, we're only four tracks in now and I'm already happier than I was listening to "I'll never get out of this world alive" all the way through.
Love's gonna blow my way reintroduces us to the hardcore troubadour of such album as "I feel alright", "Transcendental blues" and "El corazon", nice and boppy, sort of blues mixed with Country,
Pocket full of rain zips along on bright piano with a great sense of fun, and in all honesty the next acoustic track isn't till eight tracks in and it's a great little brooder,
Invisible. Some super pedal steel on this. And speaking of super, listen to the banjo on
Warren Hellman's banjo! Throw in the fiddle and you see if you can keep your toes from a-tappin'!
Add to this feast a return to the closer on his debut album in
Down the road, Pt II and you have close to as perfect a Steve Earle album as I've come across in the last decade or so. His take on why things have not improved that much with the turning of the millennium is just caustically hilarious --- "No man on the moon/ Nobody on Mars/Where the hell is my flying car?" --- with some great organ work in almost Dire Straits
Walk of life mode, and then really the only ballad on the album, a song it would seem to Earle's child, has Steve actually sounding a little tired and almost defeated. Something of a disappointingly downbeat ending to a very impressive album that has re-established my faith in this pure force of nature we know as Stephen Fain Earle.
Overall impression: Welcome back to the fold, my man!
Intention: Meh, same as ever: I'll always be a fan of this guy. Even if he does release the odd duff album. Sure who's perfect? Other than me, of course!
