Music Recs Round You Show Me Yours

[icepixie]

It's about time for another music recs post. However, I have a problem: I haven't heard much new that's good lately. :(

Instead, I'm asking you to rec music to me! What do you like? What have you been listening to of late? Links are great, but just names and titles are good too. Lay 'em on me.

(...Okay, I lied about having nothing. Possibly I've rec'ed her before, but if I haven't, try out Lucy Kaplansky, especially these two: This Is Home, Ten Year Night.)

Comments

[alto2.livejournal.com]

I've been inhaling Bruce Springsteen lately (I don't think you could go wrong with much of anything, but the ones on my list are Magic and Tunnel of Love), and then decided that after three solid months of the Boss in my car, I needed something radically different, so I've been listening to Lyle Lovett's The Road to Ensenada for the last week or so. I adore "That's Right (You're Not from Texas)" and "Private Conversation," which are the songs I heard on XPN that made me think perhaps I should put my anti-country prejudices aside and give him a try, but there's really nothing on the album that's not good. (And for me, car time is intensive music time--I never get to really know an album until it's been in my car for a while--so the fact that I'm not just playing him in my living room is saying something!)

[icepixie]

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.

/native Nashvillian rant

[alto2.livejournal.com]

Until this spring, I owned exactly one Springsteen CD (The Rising), which I bought in 2002 because it felt like 9/11 therapy. (I also figured it was time I acted like I was a New Jersey resident or they'd kick me out!) I totally loved it, but never went beyond it. I'm glad I finally have--it's sort of a "where have you been all my life?" sort of thing for me.

As for country, I hear what you're saying, but I'm coming from a totally different angle. I grew up in a Pennsylvania town where country is more popular than God anything else. Every year, Alabama would sell out the fair (which was the only local venue for any event of any size). They probably still do. Hank Williams, Jr, Willie Nelson, Eddie Rabbit, the Oak Ridge Boys...frankly, bands I would rather pop my eardrums than listen to. To this girl who grew up in an all classical-choral household, most of it hits me as twangy with really sketchy vocal quality/diction (I'm not crazy enough to expect Willie Nelson to sound like a choirboy, but still...tothough here I have to say Bruce's "yer"s drive me up a wall, too--oh, they just GRATE) that mostly makes me want to run screaming for some Mozart. Or even some good pop. There's really very little I won't listen to, but for the most part, my list can be summed up as country, metal, and rap. I tend to like the stuff that's more crossover/pop than traditional country for that reason.

I do like Alison Kraus, too, and the Emmylou Harris I've heard is okay (but I've only heard her on the radio, so it's harder for me to judge), so I agree with you there (we may actually be agreeing more than I think, too). But I am not sure I'd ever be able to get myself to sit down and listen to Alabama.

[icepixie]

I also figured it was time I acted like I was a New Jersey resident or they'd kick me out!

*snerk* That he's from New Jersey/strongly identified with the state is pretty much the only thing I know about Springsteen.

I think we're basically in agreement on country. FWIW, I tend to put Alabama in the same category as Brooks & Dunn and the others I mentioned as exemplifying the style I hate in my first comment. I think my dichotomy might fall apart when we get to people who were around before the late 1980s, because I just don't know much about various country musics before then. (Like, I would probably have to agree that Willie Nelson and Hank Willians, Jr., are not in that category of pop-with-country-veneer, but I still can't stand them either.)

Oooh, okay, for once in my life the Country Music Hall of Fame has been useful: on their list of country styles, I tend to find "Country Rock," "Alternative Country," and "Singer/Songwriter" worthwhile, and dislike everything else, with an especial hate for "New Country." That was basically what I was trying to explain earlier, I think. :)

Red Dirt Girl is my favorite Emmylou Harris song, of those I've heard (and it's not a long list; I should check out more of her stuff, though man, she's produced a thousand songs). She's not someone I'd want on a desert island or anything, but I like what I've heard.