Thanks for the recs! Bruce Springsteen is someone I've heard at various points in my life on the radio or whatever, but haven't ever really sat down and listened to. Lyle Lovett I've been meaning to check out since I heard a cover of "If I Had a Boat" by Eddie from Ohio. I've listened to some of the album you mention, and I like the title track a lot.
Re: anti-country music prejudice (which I share): I think there's a big, big difference between the Garth Brooks/Keith Urban/LeeAnn Rimes/Shania Twain kind of country music that floods "country" radio stations so that most people think of it as the prime example of the genre (not incidentally, this is what usually comes out of Nashville) and everyone else who gets lumped in that category. I hate the first kind, which is generally distinguished, in my experience, by 1.) someone making godawful noises from from a pedal steel guitar, which does not have to sound that irritating, but invariably does in this kind of music, and 2.) a fake southern drawl and/or what appears to be singing through a mouthful of marbles. Underneath those two markers, this style of country is basically pop music with, all too often, some right-wing rhetoric pastede on. People like Lovett, Emmylou Harris, Alison Krauss, the Wailin' Jennys, and so on are more what I tend to think of as "alt-country," and IMO are more on the singer/songwriter spectrum than the pop one. The structure of their songs is different, their instrumentation is different, and if they have a twang, it's natural. I mean, there's a definite difference from singer/songwriters who don't always get lumped into the country genre, but these people are a hell of a lot closer to Patty Griffin or even Dar Williams than they are to frigging Carrie Underwood. IMO, anyway.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2010-09-24 01:29 am (UTC)Re: anti-country music prejudice (which I share): I think there's a big, big difference between the Garth Brooks/Keith Urban/LeeAnn Rimes/Shania Twain kind of country music that floods "country" radio stations so that most people think of it as the prime example of the genre (not incidentally, this is what usually comes out of Nashville) and everyone else who gets lumped in that category. I hate the first kind, which is generally distinguished, in my experience, by 1.) someone making godawful noises from from a pedal steel guitar, which does not have to sound that irritating, but invariably does in this kind of music, and 2.) a fake southern drawl and/or what appears to be singing through a mouthful of marbles. Underneath those two markers, this style of country is basically pop music with, all too often, some right-wing rhetoric pastede on. People like Lovett, Emmylou Harris, Alison Krauss, the Wailin' Jennys, and so on are more what I tend to think of as "alt-country," and IMO are more on the singer/songwriter spectrum than the pop one. The structure of their songs is different, their instrumentation is different, and if they have a twang, it's natural. I mean, there's a definite difference from singer/songwriters who don't always get lumped into the country genre, but these people are a hell of a lot closer to Patty Griffin or even Dar Williams than they are to frigging Carrie Underwood. IMO, anyway.
/native Nashvillian rant