The Country Thread

Sixteen Horsepower - "Low Estate" (1997)

I thought I'd give this sophomore album a crack after really enjoying 1996's excellent "Sackcloth 'n' Ashes" album & it's subsequently delivered, if to a slightly lesser extent. The band's sound is very similar to the debut but there are definitely less highlight tracks & the material is a little more subtle & less immediate too. The main thing that sees "Low Estate" scoring a touch lower than its elder sibling is the drop in quality that occurs over the final third of the tracklisting though as the first two thirds offer some very solid gothic country indeed. Front man David Eugene Edwards is once again the highlight with his whiny tone piercing through the mix like a sharp knife. He's fucking fantastic & is what makes Sixteen Horsepower so unique.

For fans of Wovenhand, Slim Cessna's Auto Club & Calexico.

3.5/5

16 Horsepower - "Secret South" (2000)

The third album from LA's leaders of the gothic country pack sees them returning to the heights of their 1996 debut "Sackcloth 'n' Ashes" after 1997's "Low Estate" had come down a step, despite still being an entertaining listen. In fact, I'd suggest that I even slightly prefer "Secret South" over the debut with it's more stripped back format offering me plenty of appeal by maximizing the strength of front man David Eugene Edwards' story-telling prowess.

For fans of Slim Cessna's Auto Club, Me & That Man & The Builders & the Butchers.

4/5

I'm a country guy. I was born and raised on a farm on the Kansas-Nebraska Border. This is the music of my people and I love it almost as much as my metal. 

I find this to be an excellent piece of music:


A blend of contemporary country with a lot of bluegrass. Great song writing. 

Selected listening: "Gin, Smoke, and Lies", "Before the Devil Knows We're Dead", "Good Lord Lorie", and "Wrecked"

Jay Munly - "Jimmy Carter Syndrome" (2002)

It took me a couple of listens to get into the fourth full-length from this Canadian gothic country artist, mainly due to the fact that I find the first four tracks to be pretty boring. Things pick up after that though with the B side surprisingly being fairly consistent with most of the highlights residing there. The Nick Cave influence is very clear at times & I love the contributions of Sixteen Horsepower/Wovenhand front man David Eugene Edwards who is a bit of a favourite of mine these days. "Jimmy Carter Syndrome" is worth a listen but I wouldn't say that it's essential listening like some critics seem to.

For fans of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Sixteen Horsepower & Slim Cessna's Auto Club.

3.5/5

Buck Owens & His Buckaroos - Ruby (1971)

Genres: Bluegrass

I found myself in a bluegrass mood of all things, stemming from a craving to find that perfect bluegrass album.  But the RYM charts weren't helping much as many of the albums sounded samey, so I went to Reddit.  I found many recs and have a lot to go through, but then I found out this Buck Owens album was only 24 minutes.  I didn't even know he had a bluegrass album; he's mostly known as a Bakersfield sound pioneer.  What the hell, I'll just get through it, I thought to myself.  And I am so glad I had enough time for another short album.  There's a lot of spirit to be had in this album.  The band's having a lot of fun, so it's easy to have fun with them.  Now the songs follow a select few basic bluegrass formats, but the energy and production makes this album sound, even for lack of a better word to describe this album, GORGEOUS.  The mixing is gorgeous, and the country spirit is diamond purified, like they freakin' went to Jared.  Rollin' in my Sweet Baby's Arms put me in a perfect equilibrium between my body jamming and my mind and soul absorbing the essence of the music.  Honestly, there's very little country that does that, as much as I love exploring it.  Now I will criticize this album for technically being quite samey, but damn if this isn't some of the most head-bobbin country I've ever heard.

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Btw, I found that PERFECT bluegrass album pretty early on, but I'm not in the mood for reviewing a 75 minute album right now.  That album is Highway Prayers by Billy Strings, but don't get into him until you've heard some of his earlier albums.

Wovenhand - "Blush Music" (2003)

This was my first listen to Sixteen Horsepower front man David Eugene Edwards' other project & I've gotta say that I've been suitably impressed. He's quite simply one of the great modern day male vocalists &, when combined with some ambitious & creative atmospherics, has given us another captivating & rewarding listening experience with the three or four highlight tracks being utterly transcendent. In fact, I'm gonna go out on a limb & say that I actually favour "Blush Music" over ANY of the first three Sixteen Horsepower records that have impressed me so much. It's just a shame that Wovenhand have included the seven-&-a-half minute drone piece "Snake Bite" because it's a bit of a creative failure which has caused me to drop my rating a half point.

For fans of Sixteen Horsepower, Slim Cessna's Auto Club & Munly & the Lupercalians.

4/5

That's my favourite Wovenhand album. I don't mind the drone piece. In fact I like the way it leads into My Russia probably my favourite on the album. I know quite a few of these songs were on the debut, but I prefer the versions here 

Thomas Rhett - Life Changes (2014)

Genres: Country Pop

Now I am really NOT into country pop of the modern age.  While I love classic country and SOME modern country, the pop section has largely disappointed me over the years.  However, as generic as Thomas Rhett can sound, on his album Life Changes, there's one thing about this album that I love: this album's all over the genre spectrum and it never loses its personality.  Rhett's sense of pop fun seems to show quite well through country pop, alt-rock, soul, and many things in between.  I guess he followed MJ's Thriller Factor: reach out to as many people as you can.  As such, this even gets some decent marks on RYM for its efforts.  But still, the majority of songs here are still pretty generic, never really shining beyond decency and most times being just OK, sometimes sounding incomplete.  Still, this has more effort than most country pop which I've used for bottom charts, and I'll reward it for that on my end at least.

67/100

Magnolia Electric Co. - Sojourner (2007)

Genres: Alt-Country, America, Singer/Songwriter, Country Folk

I actually consider Jason Molina, RIP, one of the greatest of our age.  Several five stars as Songs: Ohia and a few key greats with his band pretty much cemented that.  The dude is good with playing with genre, so a wind-range of genre tags on any website you go to should indicate that Sojourner might be a favorite of mine.  A two-hour country album is a risk, but if Billy Strings proved anything with Home, it was possible.

Having said that, why is it that this album ragged with alt-country, folk rock, country rock, post-rock and slowcore sounds albums completely the same throughout all two hours?  I'll tell you why: because every song is being the same slow calming song played with essentially the same instruments.  This two-hour package posing as "multiple albums" shows minimal creativity and melody from start to finish, relying on a dark and empty atmosphere, a voice like a more masculine Neil Young, and clever lyrics throughout to justify this.  Now these are all proper strengths, yes, but not enough to drive two hours.  What's the point of a box set of albums when they all sound the same anyway, and when we've got plenty of two-hour albums in this day and age?  This ended up kinda boring me after a while, even though it started out well.

68/100

Bill Callahan - Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle (2009)

Genres: Americana, Alt-Country, Chamber Folk, Country Folk, Singer/Songwriter

Bill Callahan is a name that's well-regarded in the Americana scene, but I rarely ever go on full-on Americana binges.  They come out of the blue, mostly out of necessity to explore a scene, and usually I only get through a couple albums by an artist rather than a deep exploration, Callahan included.  But due to his new album being well-received, and my disappointment with MEC's Sojourner, I decided I'd finally just get the guy's opus out of the blue.

Now my original intent was to check out a few of his other works before heading to the opus, but the other two works, while good, didn't grab me by the heart, so I disregarded him in place of other Americana artists.  But I'm glad I up and chose to listen to this after the two-hour repetitive MEC album posing as a box set.  See, most Americana albums... I tend not to be impressed with because there's a very common habit of Americana fans slapping multiple genre tags on an album where each genre is largely built for slow guitar and drum songs, and the emotional range is limited to sad or calming songs.  This isn't creativity to me.

But with this album, it's different.  You may find that the genre tags for this album are largely the same, but replacing post-rock with chamber folk.  And this combination is balanced and unpredictable at the same time, adding various kinds of repeating instrumentations that one can't guess at all, much like a clever EDM album.  This greatly helps with the autumn vibe expressed on the album cover.  This can easily save many of the songs that drag on a minute or two longer than they otherwise need to.  In fact, a part of me even fell in love with the seventh track, All Thoughts Are Prey to Some Beast.  Easily an Americana favorite of mine.  On this subject of the creativity, most of the repetition and drawn out behavior take place in the first half, but is not enough to drag the whole album down.  It's largely absent in the second half, with the exception of the nine minute epic, Faith / Void, which, with its chorus, justifies the 50-something appearances of "what if" in the titular Creed song.  The instrumentation still finds room for raw autumn beauty.

Now the internet is under the impression that this is Callahan's opus.  I'm not QUITE sure I'd call it that, but it's close.  I slightly prefered Dream River for its combination of prog folk and psych folk elements.  Still, this is a very clever album that stays enjoyable while being slower than necessary.  It's a good atmospheric folk piece that I recommend hearing at least once.

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