I've only listened to a bit of her, but I rather like Neko Case. She tends to mix in indie rock to her sound, so someone with a more alternative background should find her an easy gateway artist.
A more slow, soulful tune.
Though her first album is a lot more tongue-in-cheek and has some self-consciously cheesy country rave-ups that are just bags of fun if you aren't afraid of listening to something you can't take seriously. And it gives her a chance to really show that she has some pipes with some really raw, high energy country singing.
And he isn't alternative country, but Townes Van Zandt is an old school folk country singer-songwriter that someone who doesn't really like country music can still love. There's a lot more to his music going on than a lot of generic, strumming folk singers, and his lyrics and singing voice just know how to tear your heart right out of your chest and make you wish you'd never had one in the first place. Radiohead wish they could invoke this kind of despair.
This song is probably my favorite to show off his unique sense of musicality. The acoustic guitar always makes me think of dandelion seeds in the summer wind.
He has songs with more obvious lyrics, but as for the atmosphere, this is almost claustrophobic in it's misery, and subtly phantasmagorical. It's hard to figure out just what he's talking about, as it comes off as a stream-of-conscious dream sequence mixed with a folk ghost story. If I had to guess it's about drugs, since he had a drug problem that other junkie musicians could only aspire to. Supposedly he once shot up jack and coke, as in the drink, into his veins in front of his children.
Another song that's blacker than midnight with much more literal lyrics.
Oh and if you've never somehow listened to it, Violent Femmes second album, Hallowed Ground, is as amazing a country album as it is an alternative album. Dark too. This little song is about a guy going insane, pushing his daughter down a well, and then hanging himself in a barn.
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Originally Posted by J.R.R. Tolkien
There is only one bright spot and that is the growing habit of disgruntled men of dynamiting factories and power-stations; I hope that, encouraged now as ‘patriotism’, may remain a habit! But it won’t do any good, if it is not universal.
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Last edited by The Batlord; 08-04-2014 at 09:47 AM.
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