An exercise in trying my patience: Ah gentlemen, I believe this is what we call a Quagmire

You know, the more I write this the more I realize that I’m like the person who arrives late to the party and won’t shut up about things that are blatantly obvious to everyone else. In this case the said party was four decades ago, which makes it even sadder. And, just like most parties, this is fucking boring beyond belief, but it’s a nice cover whilst I try and think of other things to write: Call it the Levees to my Hurricane Katrina, only instead of a disaster worthy of making Kanye West spitting odd aphorisms there be will only an enormous void.

Awkward and inappropriate metaphors aside, I think that this post includes the music that is closest to what I’d normally listen to. Do with that information what you will.

The Flying Burrtio Brothers
The Gilded Palace of Sin

Length of Neglect: Out of the four decades that the record existed, it has only been in possession for a couple months.

Reason for Neglect: Hey look over there! A hobo is absconding with your car keys! Get him!

As I mentioned in my rather succinct one sentence review last week, I've become quite enamored with the music of Gram Parsons. Since he was a member of this band, I guess you could call it a secret shame that I've haven't actually listened to The Gilded Palace of Sin yet (See? Even my secret shames are boring). In addition to Mr Parsons, The Brothers also featured a veritable who’s who of up and comers at the time.

The great thing about this record is that it really feels like it was the tipping point for modern alt-country, something that isn’t as noticeable with Parson's solo records. The invention and subsequent integration of new recording methods are perfectly clear on Gilded Place. The advent of multi-track recording seems like an event that the band welcomed: Many tracks featuring a separate singer on both the Left and Right speakers. Although sometimes disconcerting, it also sounds like a precursor to the Eagles, a band that was ubiquitous with country sounding vocal harmonies.

Just as there are songs that best described as 'woman beatin’ music’ there are also the political anthems that seemed so endemic to the period. The dichotomy of influences appear everywhere: Hank Williams is just as relevant here as counter culture at the time.

There in lies the beauty of this record- For every inch music changed, society crept alongside it, and it shows throughout the record. For every song that references LSD, there is another that bases itself on the old ‘cheatin’ woman’ scenario. Rather than making both types displaced, Parsons and company make them somehow work, a mash up of old and new. Generally the former trumps the latter: Dark End of the Steet sounds like a play on the old standard Long Black Veil, and Sin City is an especially poignant look at the dilemmas of city living.

The old may be better, but it was the combination of both it and new that made it enduring and important. Although the Draft Dodging My Uncle may not have kept not have the same relevance today, it’s still a competent lesson in political songwriting ( something that doesn’t seem particularly relevant today either..)

Considering the social upheaval that was occurring at the time, this CD remained strangely traditional, but, like so much of the other music created around the Vietnam War era, it had a profound impact on music over the past 40 years. It’d be fair to call The Burrito’s the Velvet Underground of country music, but I don’t think that Gram Parsons was a transvestite.

Lightspeed Champion
Lightspeed Champion

Length of Neglect: It’s only been out a month, so there, a month.

Reason for Neglect: Hey, look a Hobo and he….oh shit, I’ve done it already.

It would be unfair- although not entirely unfounded- to say that Bright Eyes is alt-country for people who don’t like alt-country. That’s not to have a go at them, it’s just that they’re much more accessible to the average person than someone like, say Whiskeytown.

In keeping with this analogy, it would be just as fair to say that Lightspeed Champion is Bright Eyes for people who don’t like Conor Orberst.

I only say this because this record is basically Bright Eyes, only with Devonte Hynes in the place of Conor.

Almost everything that made legions of teenage girls weak at the knees is still here, just in a lesser form. Mike Mogis and Nate Walcott (the two ‘other’ members of Bright Eyes) provide help on the instrumental side, and it their fingerprints are all over it: most of these songs sound like they could be off I’m Wide Awake it’s Morning.

Same with the confessional diary type lyrics that inhabit every song: Hyne’s seems intent on spilling out details that most others would overlook.

In fact the only thing that is really different is the voice: Hynes’s voice is more overpowering than Oberst’s wavering vibrato, but there are still moments when it you could swear its Conor crooning over a lost love.

Endless comparisons aside, Champion is quite a departure from Hyne’s previous work. He previously made almost every sort of music with the unfortunately named Test-icles, so a change to making country tinged pop is rather odd. It’s difficult to say how this reversal of musical taste is suited to Hynes. His voice occasionally veers into Brit-pop territory, resulting in an odd mix of Blur-esque vocals and Lap steel guitars. Other times you’d swear he’d lived in Nashville -or rather Omaha- for all of his life.

On the other hand, his lyrics are perfectly suited to the music, ranging from I Could Have Done Better Myself, a Saul Williams-esque tale of his first sexual encounter to Devil Tricks For a Bitch, which has more than a few similarities to Lover I Don’t Have to Love. The albums highlight is in the Nine-minute ramble-a-thon that is Midnight Surprise. Featuring so many movements that you’d swear it OD’d on laxatives, it switches from gentle to brutal throughout.