Rolling Country 2010

"Sandman" would make my top ten if it were a single (or a track that was getting some sort of significant push or attention, which it's not, unfortunately, except from us). If my country ballot were due today this is what singles and albums would look like.

SINGLES
1. Little Big Town "Little White Church"
2. Sunny Sweeney "From A Table Away"
3. Martina McBride "Wrong Baby Wrong Baby Wrong"
4. Trace Adkins "Ala-Freakin-Bama"
5. Laura Bell Bundy "Giddy On Up"
6. Stealing Angels "He Better Be Dead"
7. Sarah Darling "Whenever It Rains"
8. Miranda Lambert "Only Prettier"
9. Brad Paisley "Water"
10. Sarah Darling "With Or Without You"

Still debating the order of the first two, and the last several could easily be replaced by any of the following (esp. since I consider Sarah Darling a bit too wet, and not just because she comes right after "Water"): Miranda Lambert "The House That Built Me," Kenny Chesney "Ain't Back Yet," Jerrod Niemann "Lover, Lover," Martin Ramey "Twisted," Jake Owen "Tell Me," Kenny Chesney "Somewhere With You," Jaron And The Long Road To Love "Pray For You," Randy Montana "Ain't Much Left Of Lovin' You," Eric Church "Smoke A Little Smoke," Luke Bryan "Someone Else Calling You Baby," Gretchen Wilson "I Got Your Country Right Here," Los Lobos "Burn It Down," Blaine Larsen "Leavin'," Dierks Bentley "Draw Me A Map," Tim McGraw "Felt Good On My Lips," Toby Keith "Bullets In The Gun," Taylor Swift "Speak Now," Taylor Swift "Mean," The Band Perry "If I Die Young," Jason Aldean ft. Kelly Clarkson "Don't You Wanna Stay," and presumably a bunch of others that I might run into in the next three weeks - though I'm not feeling the need to search too hard, as I'm fine with my choices already. Albums are a different story.

ALBUMS
1. Taylor Swift Speak Now
2. Chely Wright Lifted Off The Ground
3. Mumford & Sons, Laura Marling, Dharohar Project Mumford & Sons, Laura Marling, Dharohar Project (EP)
4. Flynnville Train Redemption

Pending: Kenny Chesney, Jamey Johnson, and beyond that I need your suggestions, though from upthread I gather that Jerrod Niemann and Laura Bell Bundy are worth some listens. Would like to get Redemption off the list, actually. Its other standout track is "Friend Of Sinners," an effectively evocative plea for redemption. Interesting that the Flynnvillers rock and evoke the shit out of lame-ass "Sandman" but fall short on their outfront rockers: rock 'em nicely, but need singing that's either tougher or more desperate than they can manage. I do recommend "Home," "Preachin' To The Choir," and "Scratch Me Where I'm Itchin'" and think most of the rest are good songs that needed more from the frontman.

Geoffrey doesn't count EPs, but not for the first time I'm ignoring his instructions. I generally had a negative impression of Mumford & Sons - the singer's a strained and emphatic folkie in a way I find irritating. But a friend was giving me a lift a few weeks ago, and her teenage son was in the back enthusiastically singing along, knowing almost all the words, as Mumford & Sons played in the deck. He said, "They're really depressing, but in a way that's uplifting." That incident didn't turn me around, but it did get me to check further, which is how I uncovered the EP. The Mumford song and the Marling song are carried into new territory by India Indians who add their own fierce warbles and instrumentation, with the Mumford picking and strumming driving things right along. Actually, it's the Mumford and Marling compositions that lead the charge here.

This is almost definitely my NashScene singles and albums ballot. Think Flynnville is solider (and their singer more effective) than Frank does, though agree "Friend Of Sinnners" is the second-best (not to mention second-most rocking) track. Pretty sure I wrote about some of the other songs either upthread, or on Rolling Hard Rock, or both. (Also, I was surprised to like the Mumford/Marling/ Dharohar song that Frank put on his most recent mix CD, though I haven't liked anything I've heard by Marling or the Mumfords individually. Though Marling also makes an appearance on this year's album by Johnny Flynn, which I thought was pretty good.) Anyway:

TOP TEN COUNTRY ALBUMS OF 2010: (first five will almost definitely also make my Pazzz & Jop ballot)

1. Taylor Swift – Speak Now (Big Machine)
2. Jace Everett – Red Revelations (Western Boys/Hump Head)
3. Jamey Johnson – The Guitar Song (Mercury)
4. Flynnville Train – Redemption (Evolution)
5. Chely Wright – Lifted Off The Ground (Vanguard)
6. Laura Bell Bundy – Achin’ & Shakin’ (Mercury)
7. Lee Brice – Love Like Crazy (Curb)
8. Colt Ford – Chicken And Biscuits (Average Joe’s)
9. Kenny Chesney – Hemingway's Whiskey (BNA)
10. Jerrod Niemann – Judge Jerrod And The Hung Jury (Sea Gayle/Arista Nashville)

TOP TEN COUNTRY SINGLES OF 2010: (first three will almost definitely also make my Pazz & Jop ballot):

1. Sunny Sweeney – From a Table Away
2. Mallary Hope – Blossom In The Dust
3. Laura Bell Bundy – Giddy On Up
4. Kenny Chesney – Somewhere With You
5. Lady Antebellum – Stars Tonight
6. Eric Church – Smoke A Little Smoke
7. Martina McBride – Wrong Baby Wrong
8. Stealing Angels – He Better Be Dead
9. Little Big Town – Little White Church
10. Kevin Fowler – Pound Sign (#?*!)

My next seven country albums after those would look like something like this (could make the list even longer, but I'd say after these ones, things get pretty marginal, if they aren't already):

11. Shinyribs – Well After Awhile (Nine Mile)
12. Ray Wylie Hubbard – A. Enlightenment B. Endarkment (Hint: There Is No C) (Thirty Tigers/Bordello)
13. Trace Adkins – Cowboy’s Back In Town (Universal)
14. Merle Haggard - I Am What I Am (Vanguard)
15. Stone River Boys – Love On The Dial (Cow Island)
16. Randy Houser – They Call Me Cadillac (Show Dog)
17. Elizabeth Cook – Welder (Thirty Tigers)

I'm still sorting out my final NS ballot, but does anyone have any recommendations for reissues? I typically try to stay on top of those, but that's my biggest blind spot for the year, outside of the Hank Williams Mother's Best set.

My probable reissue ballot looks pretty ridiculous. I almost considered just pissing in the wind with five old vinyl country albums that I bought for $1 this year, but right now I'm leaning toward something like this:

TOP FIVE COUNTRY REISSUES OF 2010:
1. (Various) – Fire In My Bones: Raw + Rare + Otherworldly African-American Gospel [1944-2007] (Tompkins Square)
2. Slim Cessna’s Auto Club – Buried Behind The Barn (Alternative Tentacles)
3. Ashley Hutchings, Richard Thompson, Dave Mattacks, John Kirkpatrick, Barry Dransfield – Morris On (Fledg’ling)
4. (Various) – Classic Appalachian Blues (Smithsonian Folkways)
5. Jeff Eubank – A Street Called Straight (Drag City)

And oh yeah, I once again disqualified sundry 2010 Southern Soul (i.e., Luther Lackey, who'll make my Pazz & Jop albums ballot), regional Mexican (i.e., Intocable, who'll make my Pazz & Jop singles ballot), and white guiar blues (i.e., Tim Woods) records from Nashville Scene ballot consideration, though in a slow year (see: my reissues list), I might well have decided otherwise.

I've been on something of a country / acoustic blues kick this year-- thanks, at least in part, to the Ray Wylie Hubbard album that I have in my top 10-- so 4. (Various) – Classic Appalachian Blues (Smithsonian Folkways) caught my attention. What's on that one?

I think Tim McGraw's Number One Hits might make my reissues, although I def agree with xxuxk's Rolling Stone review, linked upthread, that reaching Number One sometimes shears off too many possibilities. I prefer Elvis's collected Top Tens to his Number Ones, and it may be that if you get however many volumes of Greatest Hits McG is up to now, you'll do better than with this, but I do enjoy most of it. The MSN Listening Booth download may have jumbled the intended order of tracks, judging by the way they're listed by xxhuk's review, so I got clobbered by front-loaded "live Like You Were Dying" (in a real expensive way, although the dying one's parting words are "I hope one day you can do this too" yeah bro, um got some gold buried at the ol swimmin hole,mebbe?) and "Don't Take My Girl" and some other stuff that would be much more digestible with music that conveyed the urgent neeeed for such soothing. But we do get just that on many other tracks, where he gets more into the struggle for balance, perspective, but also self-justification, as in "Angry All The Time", and just trying to sing his way through all that shit, all those talking points, on "Please Remember Me." But I like some of the suave ballads and def the yee-haw stuff too, where he gives his band and his own light touch (unusual with the yee-haw, Brad Paisley aside) some tonic.

Also for reissues: Granma's or Grandma's Roadhouse, mainly cos I'm a sucker for sustain, and Gary Stewart's got it here ( sort of the same feel as CCR's version of "Suzie Q"), but also some okay songwriting, main limitation is that other guy's squeezebox vocals; if Gary got to sing lead, oh maiiiinn.. And Hamper McBee's The Good Old-Fashioned Way. Supposedly his authentic moonshine-cured vocal delivery was "revelatory" to folkies in the mid-60s, but these late 70s field recordings are mostly down to his good taste in choice of deep folk standards, plus he does feel 'em, and deftly rolls notes through the gaps in his teeth, and he does have some I haven't heard, and he's got good bad taste, or rather good no taste, in his anecdotal outbursts, also some x-rated songs, which are themselves quite prob deep folk standards to those who truly know, like hee-um. They really fit, and extend the canon (also the cannon, he's prob add) in a cheering way, at least to me.

Wondering if anyone else has been listening to the Loretta Lynn tribute album as much as I have. There's some absolute star power on there (Carrie Underwood and Faith Hill absolutely nail their tracks), but it's balanced nicely with some more 'alternative' picks (the White Stripes, Lucinda Williams, and Steve Earle & Allison Moorer).

My favorite by far is Alan Jackson & Martina McBride doing "Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man," but Paramore's take on "You Ain't Woman Enough" isn't far behind. I've been a huge Haley Williams fan since Riot! and this just proves the girl's got some of the best pipes going.

Only track not up to par is Kid Rock's, and that wasn't much of a surprise.

Jon_Oh, here is my review of that Appalachian blues reissue CD (scroll up for the actual track listing):

http://www.rhapsody.com/album/classic-appalachian-blues-from-smithsonian-folkways-2?artistId=42653#albumreview

And here is something much, much longer, where I compare Taylor Swift and Ke$ha:

http://blog.rhapsody.com/2010/12/taylorkesha.html

And here is my review of Kid Rock's new album that I wrote for Spin, which for some reason wound up in the magazine in slightly edited form (the version below is pre-edit), but never seems to have wound up on their website:

Kid Rock
Born Free
Atlantic

History has proven writing off Kid Rock imprudent – His albums always seem to mosey out the gate, but then months later get jumpstarted when some midwestern country station picks up the fourth single. Next thing you know, he's moved another three million units. His new Born Free already has Big Event written all over it: Rick Rubin production, Martina McBride and T.I. swapping spit on the noncommittally pandering protest "Care," Bob Seger tinkling keys behind Sheryl Crow on the "Picture" redux "Collide," Nashville musclemen and adult-alternative musos lending more hands. Chances are, not even Kid's clunkiest similes and unfunkiest drums ever will stem the demographic outreach.

Michigan, as always, will love it – In the longest of several longish songs, Kid references both Seger's "Against The Wind" and John Rich's "Shuttin' Detroit Down" as he unspecifically cheers the Motor City's resilience. But though Born Free 's dusky highway choogle provides plenty of wind-in-the-hair nostalgia for middle-aged Sons of Anarchy, it lacks jokes and raunch. And while the guitars unfurl, they never crunch, unless "God Bless Saturday"'s blue-collar BTO-lite counts. Plus, strained Neil-Young-cum-blue-eyed-soul falsettos probably aren't the best solution to Bob Ritchie's bark feeling more painful as he pushes 40. That said, he's never let his vocal limitations get in the way before. By next summer, he may well have manipulated more megaplatinum out of his fedora.

Said nice things about Kenny Chesney's "Somewhere With You" over on my lj:

Kenny Chesney "Somewhere With You": Soul-jazz chords at the start, Kenny sounding just as comfortable with smoky longing as he normally does at the beach. Thanks for saving the week, Kenny. TICK.

(The week needed saving from the Glee Cast and Coldplay.)

Also, apparently Martina or someone shortened the title but not the song when they released "Wrong Baby Wrong Baby Wrong" as a single; for no good reason I want to list it by its full title on my ballot. Assume that won't hurt its small chance of making the top tracks, as the Country Critics Poll is small enough that Geoffrey will figure out to add up the votes to each.

Musically, and in terms of singles-worthiness, I like "Care" and "Collide" pretty well; "Rock On" is the most affecting. Speaking of Mumford, Frank, here's my show preview & take on their album, though it's mostly a matter of art appreciation (but as such, and though it takes some repeated listening the album holds up, while def taking me from my rut of preferred listening):

"Tremble, little lion man /Your boldness stands alone/Among the wreck." Drawing on their reputation for poetically rowdy shows, UK folk-rockers Mumford and Sons' "Little Lion Man" is a shrewd point of risky departure for their debut album, "Sigh No More." The little penitent waits for musical shots of tough love's grace. He gets enough to break away, through rising cycles of obsessive drama. These can turn bleak; that's the risk. But the little immigrant does a "Dustbowl Dance" while hometown love and war renew their vows.

And while I'm at it, here's Marling too (haven't heard the EP, they might well be at their best there, esp, since this seems like a year for EPs, intended and in albums that require and reward cherry-picking):

At 17, British singer-songwriter Laura Marling released "Alas, I Cannot Swim," powered by a teenage appetite for folk-flavored melodrama and mischief. If your castle explodes, it might be justice, or just because. Marling's new "I Speak Because I Can" conjures with spontaneity, stagecraft, complex subtexts and direct address. Concerning her banished lord of disorder, she confides, "We write, that's all right/I miss his smell." Sounds promising. Ditto when Marling, now 20, also muses, "I wouldn't want to ruin something that I couldn't save." Let's hold her to it.

Nashville Scene ballot looking like this I think -

TOP TEN COUNTRY ALBUMS OF 2010:

1. Jamey Johnson - The Guitar Song
2. Taylor Swift - Speak Now
3. Laura Bell Bundy - Achin' and Shakin'
4. Keith Urban - Get Closer
5. Little Big Town - The Reason Why
6. Alan Jackson - Freight Train
7. Reba McEntire - All the Women I Am
8. Kenny Chesney - Hemmingway's Whiskey
9. Easton Corbin - Easton Corbin
10. Merle Haggard - I Am What I Am

TOP TEN COUNTRY SINGLES OF 2010:

1. Taylor Swift - Mine
2. Jamey Johnson - Playing the Part
3. Kenny Chesney - Somewhere With You
4. Martina McBride - Wrong Baby Wrong Baby Wrong
5. Brad Paisley - Water
6. Trace Adkins - This Ain't No Love Song
7. Tim McGraw - Still
8. Laura Bell Bundy - Drop On By
9. Sunny Sweeney - From a Table Away
10. Toby Keith - Bullets in the Gun

Looks good erasing. Anybody heard the True Blood soundtrack? I got a press release about a show in the Louisiana cafe where the show is filmed, featuring Jace Everett, C. C. Adcock, a bunch of other contributors, maybe all of em. Thanx to xhuxk for linking stream of Jace Everett's Red Revelations upthread. Also wondering about True Grit soundtrack (seen a couple good reviews already, but no mention of music. Apparently it's closer to the book; a good piece on the suthor, Charles Portis, in recent NYTimes: a truly deadpan comic novelist, it sez, unlike most, who signal when they're trying to be funny, but also blends the seriously serious into the comments of unwittingly amusing characters, True Grit a bit more shadowed than his others, apparently)

Yo Indexed, speaking of the Loretta Lynn tribute, here's xgau, with good excerpts of tracks in the podcast:
http://www.npr.org/2010/12/22/132206305/singers-have-a-ball-on-album-dedicated-to-honky-tonk-girl-loretta-lynn

Rolling Country 2011